garcia515 By Dan Ambrose: WBO super featherweight champion Roman Martinez (27-1-2, 16 KO’s) has until October to fight against #1 WBO, Mikey Garcia (33-0, 27 KO’s) or else they’ll strip Martinez of his title.

The World Boxing Organization ordered the mandatory defense for Martinez despite the fact that he recently defened his WBO title against his mandatory challenger Juan Carlos Burgos 6 months ago in January. It looks like the WBO is in a hurry to have Roman Martinez face Mikey Garcia for some reason.

Mikey lost his WBO featherweight title last June when he failed to make weight for his mismatch against Juan Manuel Lopez. The fight still went ahead with Mikey destroying Lopez in the 4th round, but they WBO featherweight strap was stripped from.

Surprisingly, Mikey is still talking about wanting to possibly move back down in weight to featherweight depending on how things go with his bout against WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez.

It looks like Mikey sees the featherweight division as a safety net for him to fall back to if he starts getting punched around at super featherweight. Mikey should do well at super featherweight, because most of the really solid fighters have left the division and moved up in weight. Mikey would have BIG problems if Adrien Broner and Yuriorkis Gamboa were still fighting at that weight.

Mikey would have to be steered around those guys because they would no doubt beat him. That’s not to say that Mikey wouldn’t have his moments early in this fights, but once he started having to eat big shots from either of those guys, I can see Mikey getting hurt and maybe suffering another injury that requires to be stopped like his fight with Orlando Salido was last January when Mikey started getting hit.

Martinez, 30, has not looked good lately, beating Diego Magdaleno by a 12 round split decision last April, and fighting to a 12 round draw against Juan Carlos Burgos last January. Martinez appears ready for the taking, and Top Rank is going well to position Mikey to fight him.