Junior lightweight contender Robinson Castellanos is out and a man he knocked out earlier this year, Yuriorkis Gamboa, is in as the opponent for Jason Sosa on an HBO card on Nov. 25, Golden Boy Promotions announced on Monday.
Former world title challenger Castellanos and former titlist Sosa were due to meet in a 10-round match in the opening bout of the HBO tripleheader (10 p.m. ET/PT) at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York, but Castellanos suffered a back injury in training, Golden Boy Promotions president Eric Gomez told ESPN.
Gomez said after Castellanos injured himself last week, he took a few days off and "when he came back later in the week and tried to work out again there was still a bunch of discomfort. So we went to Gamboa and on Friday he signed the contract and he's in. It's a great opportunity for Gamboa. It's his last hurrah. Let's see what he can do, but he's motivated."
The 35-year-old Castellanos (24-13, 14 KOs), of Mexico, scored a major upset when he dominated former unified featherweight titlist Gamboa on May 5 on ESPN in a lightweight bout. He dropped Gamboa twice and forced him to quit after the seventh round.
Gamboa (27-2, 17 KOs), 35, a 2004 Cuban Olympic gold medalist who defected and fights out of Miami, returned on Aug. 12 and won a 10-round decision majority decision in a lightweight fight against Alexis Reyes in Cancun, Mexico, but he struggled.
Gamboa said he was happy to get another chance for a higher-profile fight on the undercard of the vacant light heavyweight title bout between former unified titlist Sergey Kovalev and Vyacheslav Shabranskyy.
"I'm excited for this great opportunity to fight Sosa on the undercard of Kovalev-Shabranskyy," Gamboa said. "A win over Sosa on HBO could push me back into title contention. I'm a fighter with many aspects and dimensions, and that's what I'll bring in my fight against Sosa. For my last fight, I wasn't prepared well. This time I will be very much prepared, so I can walk away with my hand raised."
Sosa (20-2-4, 15 KOs), 29, a Puerto Rico native fighting out of Camden, New Jersey, won a secondary junior lightweight world title by 11th-round upset knockout of Javier Fortuna in Beijing in June 2016 and retained the title by decision against Stephen Smith last November in Monte Carlo. But then Sosa vacated the belt in order to facilitate a lucrative fight with titleholder Vasyl Lomachenko, who dominated him en route to a ninth-round knockout on April 8. Sosa is seeking to rebound from that loss.
"People think we have an easier opponent in Gamboa since Castellanos beat him, but we're not buying into that," Sosa said. "Maybe Gamboa didn't take Castellanos seriously. We expect to see the very best Gamboa on Nov. 25. Having said that, this is not about who we are fighting; this is about why. We are fighting to make Puerto Rico proud after what all the people who live there have been through recently (because of the recent hurricane)."
Russell Peltz, who co-promotes Sosa with Top Rank, said nobody on the Sosa team hesitated to accept Gamboa as the late replacement. "This should be a solid fight between two guys, the same size, who like to hurt people," Peltz said. "It's a better matchup, style-wise, than the one between Jason and Robinson Castellanos."
Peltz said that he has wanted to make a fight between Sosa and Gamboa since they both fought on the same card in December 2015, when Sosa got a controversial draw against Nicholas Walters and Gamboa outpointed Hylon Williams Jr.
"I love the fight," Peltz said.
In addition to Kovalev (30-2-1, 26 KOs) facing Shabranskyy (19-1, 16 KOs) and Gamboa-Sosa, light heavyweight contender Sullivan Barrera (20-1, 14 KOs) will face former interim world titleholder Felix Valera (15-1, 13 KOs) in the co-feature.