Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: At today’s weigh-in, WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (28-0-1, 16 KOs) stated that he’s interested in facing either Abner Mares of Guillermo Rigondeaux next if he can get past his opponent Jesus Ruiz (33-5-5, 22 KOs) this Saturday night at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Santa Cruz is expected to have an easy time beating Ruiz, though, as he was pooled from the bottom of the featherweight division rather than from the top.
“I’m going to fight a war and leave it in the ring and give the fans a great fight,” Santa Cruz said at today’s weigh-in. “He’s so confident that he’s going to beat me, but I’m not going to let that happen. Hopefully if everything goes well I’d like to fight Abner Mares or Rigondeaux,” Santa Cruz said.
Just how serious Santa Cruz was about wanting to fight Rigondeaux is anyone’s guess. A lot of boxing fans think Santa Cruz has been merely blowing smoke the last couple of months in talking about wanting to fight the Cuban star. The fans think Santa Cruz is just saying he wants to fight Rigondeaux because unless he acts like he’s interested in the fight, they’ll think he’s afraid to fight the Cuban star.
It is interesting that Santa Cruz mentioned Mares first instead of Rigondeaux. You can kind of read that to mean that he would prefer to face Mares if he had to pick his poison. Either of these guys are likely a step too far for Santa Cruz, but is really a step too far because he’s so much quicker than the slow-handed Santa Cruz.
Santa Cruz should be able to get by Ruiz without any problems. If he has to struggle to beat him then that would suggest that Santa Cruz clearly not in the same class as Mares and Rigondeaux, and that he should stop talking about both of them because he doesn’t belong in the ring with him.
This is a slight step up for Santa Cruz in his fight against Ruiz from his last match against his sparring partner Manuel Roman. Like Roman, Ruiz is a fringe contender, but he has a little more punching power than Roman. However, most of Ruiz’s wins have come against 2nd and 3rd tier opposition, and the only five times he’s stepped it up against B level fighters, he’s lost each time. That’s obviously not a good sign with him going into a fight against Santa Cruz.
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