By Ryan Burton

Adrien Broner (33-3) was originally scheduled to face Omar Figueroa on April 21st at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, NY. The fight was announced in January when Showtime held a press conference to announce most of their slate of fights for the first half of 2018.

The fight had problems nearly from the get go as Broner was arrested last month for allegedly groping a woman at a mall in Atlanta. Shortly thereafter Figueroa was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated.

Neither of those incidents were likely going to cause the show to be canceled but Figueroa injured his rotator cuff and pulled out of the fight last week which left the event organizers scrambling to find a new opponent for Broner.

BoxingScene.com has been advised by multiple sources that former two-division champion Jessie Vargas (28-2) will step in to replace Figueroa. Broner-Figueroa was scheduled to take place at the super lightweight limit of 140 pounds.

Sources with knowledge of the fight details have advised BoxingScene that Broner-Vargas will be contested at a catchweight of 144 pounds.

After campaigning as a welterweight early in his career, Vargas dropped down to 140 pounds where he captured his first world title and successfully defended his title twice. He moved up permanently to 147 pounds in 2015 when he faced Tim Bradley. He captured the WBO welterweight title a year later when he knocked out Sadam Ali. 

Vargas left his long time promoter Top Rank Inc. late last year and signed with Al Haymon. He made his Premier Boxing Champions debut in December when he defeated Aaron Herrera by a wide margin in Lancaster, Calif.

Broner is a former four-division champion looking to bounce back from his July points loss to Mikey Garcia.  That bout was fought at the super lightweight limit but Broner has bounced back and forth between the super lightweight and welterweight limit in recent years.  In fact this will be his second fight at a catchweight of 144 pounds.  He lost a unanimous decision at the same catchweight against Shawn Porter in 2015.  Porter had a large lead going into the 12th round but had to survive a knockdown to secure the victory.

Jermall Charlo will face Hugo Centeno for the interim WBC middleweight title in the co-feature bout.  The fight was originally scheduled to take place this past Saturday on the Deontay Wilder-Luis Ortiz undercard but had to be rescheduled when Centeno suffered an injury in his training camp.

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