Cecilia Braekhus To Headline Final HBO Card Of 2018

Undisputed women’s welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus made history earlier this year by fighting in the first-ever live women’s boxing fight on HBO and now she is set to close out the year in the main event of an HBO boxing card.

In a press conference in California, it was announced that Braekhus would headline the December 8 HBO Boxing card taking place at the StubHub Center. Braekhus will be defending her undisputed WBA, WBO, WBC, IBF and IBO titles against an opponent to be named at a later date.

This is the third time-ever a women’s boxing fight aired live on HBO, but this will be the first one to be featured as the main event. Braekhus defeated Kali Reis on the May 5 HBO card in the first women’s fight HBO and then Heather Hardy beat Shelly Vincent to win the vacant WBO featherweight title as the second-ever such fight back in October.

Also announced for the card is the televised return of Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez. Gonzalez will fight Pedro Guevara, a fight that was originally scheduled to take place earlier this year. Gonzalez was supposed to fight Guevara as the co-main event on May 5, but Gonzalez was unable to secure a visa in time for the fight. In its place, Braekhus’ fight against Reis was put in the co-main event spot. 

Gonzalez returned to action earlier this year, knocking out Moises Fuentes in the pay-per-view card of Canelo Alvarez’s win over Gennady Golovkin. Gonzalez has not fought on HBO television since losing his WBC super flyweight title to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in the main event of the September 22, 2017 card titled “SuperFly.”