By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. is saying he was stripped of his WBA junior middleweight title by the World Boxing Association, according to fightnews.com. Mayweather, who holds the WBC welterweight title as well, says he had plans on defending his stripped WBA 154 lb. title, but he can’t do it now with it having been stripped from him by the WBA.
Mayweather captured the WBA title a year ago last May in beating then WBA champion Miguel Cotto by a 12 round unanimous decision.
Mayweather said this as quoted by Fightnews.com: “I wanted to defend my WBA title after this fight, but I guess I’m no longer the WBA champ, so I didn’t know I got stripped of my title.”
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez is now the WBA Super World junior middleweight title after having beaten WBA champ Austin Trout. If the WBA stripped Mayweather of his WBA title then it’s vacant and open for another contender to fight for it.
Mayweather can always go after another junior middleweight title if that’s what he’s interested in doing. However, given how barren the division is in terms of big names, it’s not really worth it for Mayweather to be defending his WBA title or going after any of the other fighters in this weight class unless he wants to face Canelo Alvarez for his WBA/WBC 154 pound titles. That would put Mayweather in a situation where he’d likely be out-weighed by close to 20 pounds because the most Mayweather would weigh is 154 pounds, and Canelo would into the fight between 172-175 lbs.
Mayweather is better off fighting guys near his own weight at welterweight or preferably light welterweight. If Mayweather is fighting right at 147, then he should ideally be fighting light welterweights because many of them rehydrate up 10 pounds to fight at 150. There are a rare few that rehydrate 20 pounds to come in at 160, but that’s still management for Mayweather. But fighting guys in the 170s like Canelo is not a good situation for Mayweather unless he’s just looking to get the most money he can in a fight against Canelo.
If that’s the case, then he’s going to need to negotiate a rehydration clause to try and limit how much weight Canelo can regain after making weight, as well as making sure that the fight doesn’t take place in Texas and that there is none of the open scoring that we saw recently with Canelo’s win over Trout.
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