Welshwoman Lauren Price will defend her unified welterweight world titles against Puerto Rican challenger Stephanie Pineiro Aquino on Saturday, 4 April at Cardiff’s Utilita Arena.<\/p>\n
The fight will be shown live on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.<\/p>\n
Price, 31, has not fought since adding the WBC and IBF belts to her WBA crown with a dominant points win over Natasha Jonas<\/a> in London last March.<\/p>\n “Defending my world titles at home in Wales means everything to me. I want to repay the support everyone has shown me with another great performance,” Price said. <\/p>\n “I never turn down a challenge. Stephanie Pineiro Aquino is a dangerous fighter, but nothing is going to stop me from getting my hand raised on April 4 in Cardiff. Yma o hyd.”<\/p>\n Price became the first Welsh boxer to win Olympic gold at Tokyo 2020. She turned professional in 2022 and will return to fighting in Wales for the first time since defeating Jessica McCaskill in her seventh pro bout to become world champion.<\/p>\n Aquino, 35, is unbeaten in 10 professional fights but has never competed outside Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n “Lauren may have the home fans on her side, but I have a country behind me too,” Aquino said. “I am coming to take those belts back to Puerto Rico.”<\/p>\n A victory could set Price up for a push towards becoming the undisputed champion, a goal she said she expected to achieve by the end of last year after beating Jonas.<\/p>\n Price attended Mikaela Mayer’s win over Briton Sandy Ryan<\/a> in Las Vegas in March, where the American defended her WBO welterweight title.<\/p>\n “Lauren Price is not just a world champion, she is a Welsh sporting icon and one of the greatest athletes the country has ever produced,” said Boxxer promoter Ben Shalom. <\/p>\n “To bring a huge world title defence home to Cardiff for her, live on BBC Two, is something we’re incredibly proud of.”<\/p>\n On Saturday, British bantamweight Francesca Hennessy will headline on BBC Two in a world-title eliminator against Ellie Bouttell.<\/p>\n It will be the third time in more than two decades that professional boxing has been shown in prime time on BBC’s main channels, following Jeamie ‘TKV’ Tshikeva’s win over Frazer Clarke<\/a> in November and Troy Williamson’s stoppage victory against Callum Simpson<\/a> in December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Welshwoman Lauren Price will defend her unified welterweight world titles against Puerto Rican challenger Stephanie Pineiro Aquino on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":442768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-442767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/442768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}