Kermit Cintron vs Carlos Molina set for July 9th

Former welterweight titlist Kermit Cintron, idle since his bizarre loss to Paul Williams last May, will return to face Carlos Molina in a junior middleweight fight July 9, Top Rank's Carl Moretti told ESPN.com on Tuesday night.

The scheduled 10-round bout, which will be contested at a maximum weight of 152 pounds, will open the Showtime telecast headlined by lightweight titlist Brandon Rios' first defense against Urbano Antillon in a matchup of hard-charging brawlers.

"It's not signed, but it's all agreed to," Moretti said of Cintron-Molina. "It's Mexico versus Puerto Rico, and that is always a great rivalry in boxing. The winner is going to get a big fight."

Cintron (32-3-1, 28 KOs) will be returning to the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., the same venue where he lost a four-round technical decision to Williams. After their feet got tangled in the fourth round, Cintron tripped and fell out of the ring; some say he launched himself. He came to rest on the ground outside of the ring and made no attempt to try to continue, although he did not appear injured. The fight was stopped and sent to the scorecard for a technical decision. Cintron was roundly criticized after the fight by many who believed he quit.

Cintron, 31, who was born in Puerto Rico but grew up in Reading, Pa., won a welterweight title in 2006 and made two successful defenses before losing it via sixth-round knockout in 2008 to Antonio Margarito, who had also stopped Cintron in the fifth round of a 2005 welterweight title bout.

Molina (18-4-2, 6 KOs), 27, a native of Mexico based in Chicago, has not lost since 2006, going 10-0-1 in his last 11 bouts. Promotional problems with Don King, who no longer promotes him, kept Molina on the shelf for nearly two years. But he returned March 25 to fight to a 10-round draw with heralded and heavily favored former Cuban amateur star Erislandy Lara on ESPN2's "Friday Night Fights."

Molina returned just one month later, getting the call to fill in on ESPN2 when the main event fell out at the last minute, and he scored an impressive seventh-round TKO of Allen Conyers.

The strong performances in those two recent fights led to the opportunity against Cintron, Moretti said.

"Molina is on a little bit of a roll with the draw over Lara and the win over Conyers," Moretti said. "A lot of people thought he beat Lara. You have a highly motivated Molina and a Cintron, who has to beat someone like this to get back to where he wants to be at 147 or 154 pounds. I hate the cliche of it being called a crossroads fight, but it really is."

A Cintron victory would likely put him back in the mix for a much bigger fight at welterweight or junior middleweight.

"He has the ability to fight at 147 or 154, so if he wins, Cintron puts himself into play for a lot of different fights," said Moretti, noting that he could eventually face junior middleweight titleholders Miguel Cotto or Sergiy Dzinziruk. "There are a lot of names out there where if he wins, he can find himself another fight on premium cable."