What next for Mayweather’s titles

By Gavin Duthie - 05/22/2015 - Comments

Floyd Mayweather vs Manny PacquiaoBy Gav Duthie: The first of Floyd Mayweather Jr’s vacated titles the recently acquired WBO welterweight crown will be contested by Tim Bradley and Jessie Vargas. Soon enough the other governing bodies will look to fill Floyd’s vacated titles so what fights could we look forward too in the near future. 

WBO

This fight between Bradley and Vargas certainly hasn’t been getting the pulses racing and the decision to elevate this to a title fight is perplexing. Granted Bradley is the #1 contender having been the title holder before his loss to Pacquaio but Vargas is un-ranked. Jessie is the current WBA regular champion at 140lbs hence is not rated by anyone at 147lbs. It should be noted though that around half of Vargas fights have taken place at welterweight before he moved down to win his title. 

WBA@147lbs and 154lbs

Technically nothing should happen with these titles. Mayweather was elevated to Super champion in both the welterweight and light welterweight divisions. The regular champion at welter is Keith Thurman and at light middle is Erislandy Lara. Thurman has only made one title defence thus far against Robert Guerrero and Lara having lost a non-title fight to Canelo last year can’t possibly be elevated to Super champion. Of course one never really knows with the WBA, anything for a sanctioning fee. 

WBC@147lbs and 154lbs

I think the WBC will need to set up some eliminators soon as their rankings are currently a little flawed. All governing bodies have been quite lazy with Mayweather as champion having imposed no mandatory and only a few eliminators for years as he was an untouchable champion. 

WBC Welterweight Rankings

1. Amir Khan
2. Antonin Decaire
3. Marcos Maidana
4. Shawn Porter
5. Tim Bradley

I am pretty confident that no fans would gladly entertain a title fight involving Amir Khan and Antonin Decaire. Obviously the WBO have ignored there own ranking system in sanctioning Bradley-Vargas but the WBC are usually more by the book. Despite not being seen as a top welterweight Decaire is rated with the WBO and was also high with the IBF until recently. Obviously this would be an easy win for Khan. Maidana is far from a fight at present, Shawn Porter is fighting at a catchweight of 144lbs against Adrien Broner and Bradley will lose his ranking when he fights for the WBO. Unfortunately we may see Khan need to do very little to secure a new title. 

WBC Light Middleweight rankings

1. Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez
2. Jermell Charlo
3. Vanes Martirosyan
4. Anthony Mundine
5. Sergey Rabchenko

Canelo hasn’t fought in this division for a while opting to have his last two fights against Lara and Kirkland at a catch-weight of 155lbs. He seems more focused on moving up to fight Miguel Cotto so I don’t think he would be interested in a vacant title fight. 

#2 Charlo and #3 Martirosyan and #4 Mundine and #5 Rabchenko have already faced each other with ironically both decisions being controversial. Charlo won a controversial majority decision over Martirosyan and I would quite like to see them fight again in a 12 round contest for the title. The contest wasn’t a particularly exciting one with Charlo moving a lot but it would be a worthy title fight. Rabchenko was scheduled to rematch Anthony Mundine after his split decision defeat but opted to enter the WBC world cup tournament instead. 

Conclusion

There is plenty of excitement in boxing post Floyd Mayweather but unfortunately who will fight for his titles will not be one of them. 



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