Louisville, Kentucky will play host to the first round of the ‘Jose Sulaiman World Invitational Tournament’ at the KFC YUM! Center on April 27 as the matchups for the first round were announced today by Evander Holyfield’s The Real Deal Boxing in association with the World Boxing Council and Louisville’s Top Knotch.

Over the last ten days, boxing fans from around the world have ranked each of the eight welterweights chosen for the tournament which have formulated the first-round matchups. Each fight will be scheduled for ten rounds.

#1 seed Felix Diaz (19-2, 9 KOs) of Santa Domingo, D.R. will clash with #8 Derrieck Cuevas, (16-0-1, 13 KOs) of Catano, Puerto Rico.

#2 seed Chris Van Heerden (25-2-1, 12 KOs) of Johannesburg, South Africa, faces #7 Timo Schwarzkopf (18-1, 10 KOs) of Stuttgart, Germany.

#3 seed Fredrick Lawson (26-1, 21 KOs) battles #6 Aishanbo Nasiywula (13-1-1, 6 KOs) of Urumqi, China.

#4 seed Radzhab Butaev (8-0, 6 KOs) of Russia faces #5 Brad Solomon (27-1, 9 KOs) of Douglasville, Georgia.

The two alternates chosen by the fan voting are Francisco Santana (26-6-1, 12 KOs) of Santa Barbara, CA and Paddy Gallagher (13-3, 8 KOs) of Belfast, Northern Ireland.