Joe Cordina’s WBO lightweight title fight against American Abdullah Mason is off with the Welshman saying he has been denied entry to the United States.<\/p>\n
Wales’ former super-featherweight world champion Cordina, 34, had been due to take on Mason in Cleveland on Saturday, 4 July.<\/p>\n
But Cordina says the United States embassy in London turned down his visa application.<\/p>\n
In a social media post Cordina stated: “I was due to fly to the United States this week. A couple of days back I went to the US embassy in London and they basically denied me a visa.<\/p>\n
“I tried to explain certain things, and had all the paperwork to back it up, and they wasn’t having it. <\/p>\n
“They just sort of basically told me you ain’t getting in, so it’s on my hands. <\/p>\n
“Absolutely gutted, because it’s my chance to become a three time two-weight world champion, plus fight for a world title in America, which was a goal of mine.”<\/p>\n
Cordina added he “feels bad” for Mason and denied suggestions he has suffered an injury.<\/p>\n
“I’ve seen a load of things saying injuries, and this, and there’s no injuries. I’ve had a great camp,” said Cordina.<\/p>\n
The Cordina fight was set to be Mason’s first defence of the belt he won in an epic encounter with Sam Noakes in November 2025.<\/p>\n
Cordina, from Cardiff, had been hoping to become a two-weight world champion.<\/p>\n
He lost his IBF 130lb world title in May 2024, a shock defeat by Anthony Cacace the only loss in his 19-fight professional career.<\/p>\n
He has since beaten Jaret Gonzalez Quiroz to claim the vacant WBO global lightweight title before dominating Gabriel Flores Jr in California on the way to a unanimous victory on points in December 2025.<\/p>\n
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","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joe Cordina’s WBO lightweight title fight against American Abdullah Mason is off with the Welshman saying he has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":655985,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-656464","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\/656464","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=656464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/656464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/655985"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=656464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=656464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=656464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}