A meaningful crossroads fight headlines ProBox TV’s November 29 show at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, where junior lightweights Jessie Magdaleno and Muhammadkhuja Yaqubov will meet with their careers moving in very different directions.
Magdaleno (30-3, 19 KOs) once held the WBO junior featherweight title after dethroning Nonito Donaire in 2016, but his career has been defined by long stretches of inactivity and tough losses in recent years. Since 2020, the 33-year-old has fought just once per year, including defeats to Raymond Ford and Brandon Figueroa — the latter coming in an interim WBC featherweight title fight in which Magdaleno missed weight. He returned this past March with a third-round stoppage of Luis Coria but remains unranked at 130 pounds.
Yaqubov (23-1, 12 KOs) arrives with considerable momentum. Ranked fourth at junior lightweight by the WBC, the Tajik fighter has won five straight since his 2022 loss to current WBC champion O’Shaquie Foster. He continued that run in August with a majority decision over William Foster III, strengthening his push toward another championship opportunity.
In the co-feature, rising junior flyweight contender Erik Badillo takes on former world champion Elwin Soto. Badillo (18-0, 8 KOs) is positioned at the top of both the WBC and WBO rankings at 108 pounds and is coming off a July win over Gerardo Zapata in a WBC eliminator. Soto (21-3-1, 13 KOs) captured the WBO title in 2019 and made three defenses before suffering close back-to-back losses. Now ranked in the top 15 by both the WBO and WBC, he enters the fight unbeaten in his last three.
Fight card:
▪️Muhammadkhuja Yaqubov vs. Jessie Magdaleno, 10 rounds, junior lightweight
▪️Erik Badillo vs. Elwin Soto, 10 rounds, junior flyweight
▪️Adelaida Ruiz vs. Alexas Kubicki, 10 rounds, for the vacant WBC women’s junior bantamweight title
▪️Justin Pauldo vs. Nike Theran, 10 rounds, lightweight
▪️Karlos Balderas vs. Ricardo Quiroz, 10 rounds, junior welterweight
▪️Charlie Sheehy vs. D’Angelo Keyes, 8 rounds, lightweight
▪️Jose Contreras vs. Giovanny Gonzalez, 8 rounds, featherweight
▪️Jorge Maravillo vs. Cameron Krael, 6 rounds, junior middleweight
