"The Fighting Marine" is back. Jamel "Semper Fi" Herring will defend his WBO junior lightweight world title TONIGHT against Puerto Rican challenger Jonathan Oquendo.
ESPN+ will stream the Herring-Oquendo card beginning at 7:30 p.m. ET/4:30 p.m. PT, which also includes undefeated super middleweight contender Steven Nelson against DeAndre Ware and heavyweight sensation Jared "The Real Big Baby" Anderson (5-0, 5 KOs) versus Rodney Hernandez.
Battling through two previous cancellations before one another, Jamel Herring and Jonathan Oquendo are finally set to square off on Saturday (7:30 p.m. ET, ESPN+) in Las Vegas. The prior two scheduled meetings -- July 2 and 14 -- were postponed after Herring twice tested positive for COVID-19. Months later, everyone is good to go for Herring to put his WBO super featherweight title on the line.
"I just feel like everything happens for a reason," Herring said at the pre-fight press conference. "It's not like I was the only one just suffering -- it's a global pandemic so I can't really complain too much. I'm just glad that I have a great team, my management, BoMac, and my promoter Top Rank, where we have the access to be able to reschedule and get me back in action."
Herring (21-10, 10 KO), a former United States Marine and part of the 2012 Olympic boxing team, earned the WBO title with a May 2019 win over Masayuki Ito. After a successful title defense against Lamont Roach, COVID-19 threw Herring's career into chaos. First, the longstanding plan for a showdown with Carl Frampton in Ireland was pushed off by the global pandemic. Then came the two positive tests and all of a sudden Herring has now been out of the ring for 10 months.
Oquendo (31-6, 19 KO) is on a 5-1 run since 2017. The lone loss in that span came two fights ago when he lost a wide decision against Roach. A rebound win over Charles Huerta in November for a secondary WBO title put him in position to take advantage of the Frampton fight being out of reach for Herring.
"Look, all I know is that we've done all the testing and I've come out negative every time," Oquendo told BoxingScene. "Of course, there's a part of me that will be relieved to finally hear the opening bell. But I never worried about the fight not happening. I signed a contract to fight him and now the fight is on. I can't wait for [Saturday]."