Rajon Chance planning East Orange homecoming fight in January
EAST ORANGE, N.J. — For Rajon Chance, there really is no place like home.
The 24-year-old super bantamweight prospect may be returning to the ring in his hometown of East Orange, N.J., with a target date being eyed for the third week of January.
Chance (8-1-1, 6 knockouts) tells NJBoxingNews that he is looking to bounce back from his first career defeat with a hometown fight.
“I fought in Newark already, conquered the Prudential Center when it needed to be, 3 million on Fox, so I think now it’s time for me to come back home to East Orange and show out. I’ll be back home fighting in East Orange next,” said Chance.
Promoter Joe DeGuardia of Star Boxing confirmed to NJBoxingNews that a deal is being worked on to have the fight take place in New Jersey. Manager Gabriel Blinder says the deal is still being worked on, with the target venue being East Orange Campus High School, which seats approximately 3,000 people.
The high school last hosted a professional boxing show in 2017 with a card that featured Newark boxer Angel Concepcion.
Blinder says the plan is to build him back from his first defeat, a controversial split decision loss to Travon Lawson this past April, and then attempt to climb the rankings.
“We’re gonna do our best to get him in the top 70, 60 in the next two fights and then eventually get him in the rankings and get him an international fight. Right now we’re working on a regional title, eventually that will move into the international. We’re trying to build a world champion,” said Blinder.
Chance revealed on social media on Thursday that he struggled with depression following the loss to Lawson, which was his first fight in 13 months. Chance says that for six months he had a hard time getting back into serious training and was sleeping until 6 p.m., but adds that he has shaken his depression and made peace with what happened at Mohegan Sun.
“With that loss right there, a lot of people said I won. I thought so too. I actually thought that was one of my good performances but they thought I didn’t do enough. I thought I beat the shit out of him but I should have stopped him and made it so it’s not even close. I’m gonna take that to the chin because if I let that loss get to me then that would mean I let another man get to me. I’m gonna have to take it as what it is and bounce back as a man should,” said Chance.
“Now this ain’t got nothing to do with boxing. It’s someone taking something away from me so I’m gonna get that shit back.”