Brian Viloria’s upcoming world title defense will be broadcast in the United States by HBO Sports, Top Rank Boxing announced Thursday.
Viloria (32-3, 19 KOs) will defend his WBO and WBA flyweight titles against Juan Francisco Estrada (22-2, 18 KOs) at the CotaiArena in Macau, China on April 6.
The broadcast will air on a same-day delay at noon Hawaii time on HBO 2, shown on channels 612/1612 (Oceanic), Ch. 505 (DIRECTV) and Ch. 503 (Hawaiian Telcom).
DIRECTV subscribers can also watch the fight at 9 a.m. on Ch. 502.
Tim Ryan, Larry Merchant and former heavyweight champion George Foreman will do the broadcast from Macau, which is 18 hours ahead of Hawaii.
Viloria has rattled off six straight wins since last losing three years ago, and will try to successfully defend his WBO championship for a fourth time.
He unified the WBA championship with a 10th-round TKO of Hernan Marquez last November and has won four of his past five fights by TKO.
Estrada lost a unanimous decision to undefeated WBA light flyweight champion Roman Gonzalez in the co-feature bout on the Marquez/Viloria card and will move up in weight to challenge for the belt.
Manager Gary Gittelsohn said the Viloria fight will be the main event.
The card also includes a WBO junior lightweight title fight between champion Roman Martinez and Diego Magdaleno and the pro debut of Chinese Olympian and three-time world amateur champion Zou Shiming. Shiming won gold at both the 2008 and ’12 Olympic Games.
“(Shiming) has garnered a lot of interest in China and all of a sudden this two-billion population is interested in boxing,” Gittelsohn said. “It’s already garnering an awful lot of pre-fight interest and more importantly, over 150 networks are going to be covering it.”
Viloria has appeared on the undercard of HBO pay-per-views but has never fought in the main event of an HBO show.
Viloria and Shiming are training together at the Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood, Calif.
