Joe Cordina faces a court appearance in July after being charged “with assault and threatening a person with an offensive weapon in a public place”.

The 34-year-old Welshman is a former super-featherweight world champion and had been due to fight for the WBO lightweight title in the United States on 4 July.

South Wales Police (SWP) has confirmed Cordina and another man have been charged in connection with an incident that took place outside a petrol station in the Cardiff suburb of Pentwyn last February.

SWP stated: “Joseph Cordina, 34, from Pontprennau, has been charged with assault and threatening a person with an offensive weapon in a public place. He is due to appear at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court on July 7.

“Jamie O’Brien, 32, from Pentwyn, has been charged with assault and is due to appear at Cardiff Magistrates’ Court on July 28.”

Cordina was due to fight American Abdullah Mason in Cleveland on Saturday, 4 July, but said on Wednesday the United States embassy in London turned down his visa application.

Cordina revealed in a social media post on Wednesday that he had been denied a US visa, saying: “I was due to fly to the United States this week. A couple of days back I went to the US embassy in London and they basically denied me a visa.

“I tried to explain certain things, and had all the paperwork to back it up, and they wasn’t having it.

“They just sort of basically told me you ain’t getting in.”

The Cordina fight was set to be Mason’s first defence of the belt he won in an epic encounter with Sam Noakes in November 2025.

Cordina, from Cardiff, had been hoping to become a two-weight world champion.

He lost his IBF 130lb world title in May 2024, a shock defeat by Anthony Cacace the only loss in his 19-fight professional career.

He has since beaten Jaret Gonzalez Quiroz to claim the vacant WBO global lightweight title before dominating Gabriel Flores Jr in California on the way to a unanimous victory on points in December 2025.

Cordina won British and Commonwealth titles at lightweight earlier in his career, having been a decorated amateur boxer who fought at an Olympics and in the same Team GB programme as his friend Anthony Joshua.