By Dan Ambrose: With few boxing fans talking about his upcoming mismatch against fringe contender Jesus Ruiz (33-5-5, 22 KOs) on January 17th, WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (28-0-1, 16 KOs) has been doing a lot of talking about wanting to fight WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux and Abner Mares.
Santa Cruz is also interested in facing Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg. However, Rigondeaux and Mares appear to be on the top of his list right now for obvious reasons. They’re the bigger fights for Santa Cruz that would give him the most cache with boxing fans if he were to win those fights.
Santa Cruz and Ruiz will face each other on the Deontay Wilder vs. Bermane Stiverne card at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. Unfortunately for Santa Cruz, few fans have shown much interest in this fight because of it appearing to be a mismatch on paper, and his third consecutive easy fight.
Santa Cruz doesn’t make his fights, his adviser does, but he obviously needed to put his foot down before his last fight instead of letting himself get routinely matched up against guys with little no chance.
“He’s [Rigondeaux] talking about wanting to fight me,” Santa Cruz said about Rigondeaux via esnewsreporting.com. “Maybe he wants to get that money, because he knows that if he fights me he’s going to get paid. I’m willing to fight him because that’s what the fans want. I want to be in a main event. It could be against Rigondeaux, Abner Mares, Carl Frampton or Scott Quigg. He’s [Rigondeaux] starting to slug more. He’s trying to get the fans to like him. Hopefully when he fights me he’ll do that too. I’m going to start for the big names – Rigondeaux, Frampton and Scott Quigg. I’m going to push them to give me those fights.”
Santa Cruz appears to be talking about his adviser Al Haymon and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions when he talks of pushing them to give him the big fights. He won’t have to work too hard in getting them to match him against Mares, because that’s just the fight that his promoter Oscar De La Hoya is talking about wanting to me.
De La Hoya likes that fight. However, getting De La Hoya on board for a Santa Cruz vs. Rigondeaux fight might prove to be all but impossible because De La Hoya is pretty careful in who he matches his guys against, and he seems to prefer to put his guys in with fighters that they have a great chance of beating.
In the times where they’re matched up in competitive fights against dangerous opposition, it happens when it’s a huge money fight where there is nothing to lose for his fighter.
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