10 rounds @ featherweight on the Crawford vs. Porter card in Las Vegas on November 20th, airing on PPV. Unlikely to be a final eliminator, but will be for a top contending position in the WBO (currently Díaz is ranked #12 by that org, while absent from all others - and Dogboe is WBO #4 as well as WBC #9 and IBF #10). The ultimate goal of either man jockeying for WBO mandatory position, as things now stand, is a rematch with common rival Emanuel "El Vaquero" Navarrete Martínez. The hard-hitting but limited Mexican first came to international prominence in 2018 by upsetting a then still unbeaten Dogboe via UD for the WBO super bantamweight strap. El Vaquero then scored a TKO12 in the rematch the following year...and, incidentally, would net that same result (TKO12) versus Díaz this past April. He just retained his title last weekend with a somewhat controversial UD over Joet De Jesús González (a draw on my card) on ESPN. Ahead of Dogboe in the WBO rankings, besides previous #1 contender Joet (who is sure to drop when they're next updated) are just Mark Magsayo and Oleg Malinovskyi. Díaz would need to leapfrog Rubén Villa IV, Jessie Magdaleno, Brock Jarvis, Isaac Lowe, Mauricio Lara, Bryan Chevalier, and Satoshi Shimizu just to reach the Ghanaian's current position - so knocking off Dogboe directly would make for a tidy shortcut and maybe pave the way into a top 5 spot for the Puerto Rican.
