Leo Santa Cruz to fight in August or September, wants Mares

By Boxing News - 06/25/2015 - Comments

santa cruz677By Dan Ambrose: WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (30-0-1, 17 KOs) says he’ll be back inside the ring in August or September against an opponent still to be determined. Santa Cruz, 26, wants to face former three division world champion Abner Mares next, but it’s not likely that fight will take place.

The best you can hope for is that Santa Cruz at least fights a quality guy for a change after fighting four consecutive mismatches dating back to March of last year. The last quality opponent Santa Cruz fought was Cesar Seda in December 2013.

Boxing fans were hoping that Santa Cruz would fight the likes of Guillermo Rigondeaux, Carl Frampton, Nonito Donaire or Scott Quigg. Instead, they’ve had to sit through mismatches against Manuel Roman, Jose Cayetano, Jesus Ruiz and Cristian Mijares.

The last fight that Santa Cruz had was against Cayetano on the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Manny Pacquiao undercard last month on May 2nd. The fight was barely worth watching, as Santa Cruz teed off on the poor opponent, who looked like he didn’t belong in the ring with Santa Cruz.

“I asked for that fight. They told me that I’m going to fight in August or September and I would be ready,” Santa Cruz said to ESPN.com. “I want Mares. I talked to my team, I talked to my manager, and I said, ‘I want that fight.’ They are trying to make that fight happen.”

Santa Cruz says he’s not the one that makes his fights. His team decides who he faces, and it looks like they’ve decided that they want to see him fight guys like Roman, Cayetano, Ruiz and Mijares. This suggests that they have some concerns about how Santa Cruz would do against the likes of Quigg, Donaire, Frampton and Rigondeaux.

“I want to make those fights. I want to fight guys like Frampton and Rigondeaux but it’s not up to me,” Santa Cruz said. My whole team has to decide to do it.”

If Santa Cruz’s team are the ones that keep matching him against soft opponents then it’s up to Santa Cruz to try and stand up to his team and tell them what he wants for his career. It’s pretty sad that Santa Cruz has lost popularity in the minds of a lot of boxing fans due to him not fighting the guys that they want him to fight. When they see him being put in with his former sparring partner, it raises red flags that he’s just being put in title milking fights rather than competitive match-ups where he has the potential to lose.

Santa Cruz vs. Mares wouldn’t even be that big of a fight right now given all the easy marks that both guys have had in recent years. Mares hasn’t faced a quality opponents in two years since he was knocked out in the 1st round by Jhonny Gonzalez. Since then, Mares had beaten the following lower level opponents: Jonathan Oquendo, Jose Ramirez, and Arturo Santos Reyes. At this point it’s unclear just when Mares will finally get put in with a good opponent again.

Like Santa Cruz, Mares has burned up two years of his career, and there’s no telling whether he’s going to burn up a third straight year fighting poor opposition. It’s pretty sad that neither of these fighters have anything to show for their last two years of their careers.



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