Unbeaten Ernesto \u201cTito\u201d Mercado has signed a promotional deal with Southern California-based DMG Promotions, a move the 24-year-old 140lbs fighter believes will keep him busy and position him for a title run.<\/p>\n
Mercado 18-0 (17 KOs), of Pomona, California, is scheduled to return June 19 at his hometown Fox Theater.<\/p>\n
Ranked No. 5 by the WBO and No. 8 by the IBF, Mercado last fought on DAZN for prior promoter Matchroom in December, knocking out veteran Mexican opponent Antonio Moran in the sixth round.<\/p>\n
His next opponent has yet to be announced, but Mercado has remained training and fit and predicted he will look \u201csuper sensational.<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m itching to get back and hungry to get in the ring again, having a homecoming fight,\u201d Mercado told BoxingScene Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re ready to fight the best guys now. It\u2019s one step at a time. I\u2019ll be busy, and we have big plans coming forward.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mercado has previously called out four-division champion Shakur Stevenson, who wears the WBO 140lbs belt and is reportedly near a union with Zuffa Boxing.
Mercado would also like a crack at WBO No. 2 ranked Emiliano Vargas.<\/p>\n
His father-trainer-manager, Ernesto Mercado Snr., said aligning with a Southern California promoter met their immediate goals to fight locally with the flexibility to work with major promotions as the quality of the fights increase.<\/p>\n
He declined to discuss the financial terms or length of the deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to be home grown, not a road warrior jumping around like a Ping-Pong ball,\u201d Ernesto Mercado said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Unbeaten Ernesto \u201cTito\u201d Mercado has signed a promotional deal with Southern California-based DMG Promotions, a move the 24-year-old…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714444,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,149181,82,258821],"class_list":["post-714443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-ernesto-mercado","tag-sports","tag-tito-mercado"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714443","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=714443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}