WBO title next month
MELBOURNE, Australia, (CMC) – Guyana’s former world champion Gairy St Clair is booked to fight for the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) Oriental/Africa light welterweight title against Australian Lance Gostelow next month.
Gostelow is the title-holder and is slated to clash with St Clair in his first defence of the WBO 140-pound belts on March 18 at a venue in Melbourne to be confirmed.
The bout will be St Clair’s first since December last year when he defeated Indonesian Moses Seran to snap a three-fight losing streak.
St Clair, who has moved up in weight class, has a current ring record of 42 wins (18 knockouts) against 10 losses and two draws.
Gostelow, who defeated Nigeria-born Fatai Onikeke for the WBO Oriental and Africa titles last October, has 20 wins (14 knockouts) against two losses.
A former International Boxing Federation (IBF) super-featherweight world champion, St Clair had announced his retirement from boxing last year June, shortly after he suffered a ninth-round technical knockout loss – his seventh defeat in 10 fights — to the Uganda-born Jackson Asiku.
The Australia-based St Clair had a change of heart and returned to the ring six months later to defeat Seran on a unanimous points decision.
St Clair became Guyana’s fourth world boxing champion – after Andrew Lewis, Wayne Braithwaite and Vivian Harris — when he defeated South African Cassius Baloyi on a unanimous decision in South Africa in July 2006.
He held the crown for only three months, losing his first title defence to South African Malcolm Klassen..