Cordina won British and Commonwealth titles at lightweight earlier in his career, having been a decorated amateur boxer who fought at an Olympics and in the same Team GB programme as his friend Anthony Joshua.<\/p>\n
After turning professional in 2017 he became Wales’ 13th world champion boxer when he beat Kenichi Ogawa to claim the IBF super-featherweight title in June 2022.<\/p>\n
Cordina was stripped of the title when he was unable to defend it within a 90-day window after suffering a broken hand, but won it back with a hard-fought split-decision win over Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov in April 2023.<\/p>\n
He was a strong favourite to retain his belt in Riyadh in May 2024, but the referee stopped the fight in the eighth round of a bout dominated by Belfast’s Cacace.<\/p>\n
Cordina was scheduled to make a comeback against Shakur Stevenson in October 2024, but the WBC lightweight champion pulled out with a hand injury.<\/p>\n
Returning from a 14-month lay-off in July 2025 he beat Gonzalez Quiroz with a hard-fought points decision at Manchester’s AO Arena, needing to dig deep against the quick-handed and spirited Mexican.<\/p>\n
Cordina was given a scare by Flores Jr in a fight billed as a final eliminator for the WBO lightweight world title.<\/p>\n
The Welshman was docked a point in the sixth round in Stockton for rabbit punching and saw his knees buckled by an uppercut in round seven.<\/p>\n
However Cordina went on to win his first fight in America 117-110 115-112 114-113, establishing himself as Mason’s number one contender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cordina won British and Commonwealth titles at lightweight earlier in his career, having been a decorated amateur boxer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":568058,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-568234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=568234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568234\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}