Irish featherweight Bernard Dunne is set to take his first step into the professional ranks when he faces 24-year-old Mexican Rodrigo Ortiz in Feather Falls Casino in California tonight.
The Irish amateur champion's first professional bout takes place in a 1,300 seat venue just outside the state capital Sacramento.
Dunne was originally scheduled to be on the undercard of Wayne McCullough at the venue in the Belfast fighter's first venture into the ring after 26 months of inactivity.
McCullough's last fight finished in a points defeat to Mexico's WBC super-bantamweight champion Erik Morales in October 1999.
The former WBC world champion and 1992 Olympic silver medallist has put back his plans. He will, however, most likely face the same opponent, Alvin Brown, in his adopted home of Las Vegas on January 12th at The Cox Pavilion.
The bout will be on the undercard of the WBO super-featherweight bout between Acelino Freitas against Joel Casamayor. Casamayor was the Cuban boxer who defeated McCullough in the Barcelona Games in the final of the bantamweight division.
McCullough hopes to shake off the ring rust with one or two bouts before challenging for an IBF world title fight next spring. He is reunited with his original manager Mat Tinley and is managed by his wife Cheryl.
The Belfast boxer was passed fit to fight by American specialists as well as one British expert but has been prohibited from fighting in Britain since a cyst was found on his brain in a routine scan before a scheduled fight in Belfast 12 months ago. McCullough's lawyers are taking legal action against the UK sport's controlling body, the British Boxing Board of Control.
Dunne (21), who won 119 of his 130 fights as an amateur, has given himself three years to climb to the top of the featherweight division under Irish manager Brian Peters and Tinley's US company, America Presents.
Meanwhile, Germany's former world boxing champion Graciano Rocchigiano has been charged with assault after allegations he beat up four Berlin police officers. Rocchigiano, a former IBF super-middleweight and WBC light-heavyweight champion, faces charges of assault, insulting police officers and resisting arrest.
