Leo Santa Cruz vs. Kiko Martinez on February 20 in Los Angeles, CA

By Boxing News - 01/08/2016 - Comments

Santa-Cruz-Mares-REsults (7)By Dan Ambrose: WBA featherweight Super champion Leo Santa Cruz (31-0-1, 17 KOs) will be defending his WBA title against 29-year-old former IBF super bantamweight champion Kiko Martinez (34-6, 25 KOs) on February 20 in Los Angeles, California, according to Fight News. The venue for the fight still hasn’t been determined at this time.

This is an unusual choice of an opponent for Santa Cruz, because he’s a featherweight champion and Martinez fights in the 122lb division and was recently knocked out in two rounds by WBA super bantamweight champion Scott Quigg last year in July in the UK. Martinez has since won his last three fights against weak opposition in beating Miguel Gonzalez, Everth Briceno and Herald Molina.

Santa Cruz, 27, defeated Abner Mares by a 12 round majority decision last August in 2015 in a fight that took place at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. The fight was pretty one-sided with two of the judges scoring it 117-111 and 117-111, while the third scored it even at 114-114. There’s no way you can look at the Santa Cruz-Mares fight and score it a draw. That was just a really crazy score by the judge that had it even.

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It would have been better if Santa Cruz were to face one of the contenders in the WBA’s rankings. If you look at the rankings for the World Boxing Association, Santa Cruz’s promoters had plenty of good options available to them from the featherweight division. They didn’t need to pool from the 122lb division to dig up a fighter like Kiko Martinez.
Here’s the WBA’s top 15 rankings at featherweight:

1. Carlos Zambrano
2. Nicholas Walters
3. Satoshi Hosono
4. Abner Mares
5. Nonito Donaire
6. Claudio Marrero
7. Simpiwe Vetyeka
8. Carmine Tommasone
9. Bryan De Gracia
10. Oleg Yefimovych
11. Josh Warrington
12. Thong Sithluangphophun
13. Nathaniel May
14. Nicolas Javier
15. Jonathan Oquendo

Even a rematch with Mares would have been a far better choice for Santa Cruz than to have him fight the recently knocked out Martinez. That’s just poor match-making. Besides his knockout loss to Quigg, Martinez was also recently beaten twice by Carl Frampton. Martinez is still ranked #7 by the WBC at super bantamweight, but he’s been dropped from the top 15 rankings by the other sanctioning bodies due to his recent string of defeats. Martinez has lost two out of his last six fights. He was beaten by Frampton for the first time in 2013 by a 9th round knockout.

Luis Ortiz must face Alexander Ustinov

The WBA has ruled that interim WBA heavyweight champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz (24-0, 21 KOs) must defend his WBA title against #7 WBA Alexander Ustinov (33-1, 24 KOs) before June 19 in 2016. This could be a good thing for Ortiz, who needs an opponent for his next fight. His promoters at Golden Boy Promotions want to get the 36-year-old Ortiz back inside the ring by March or April. If they can get the 39-year-old Ustinov inside the ring, it would be a great fight.

“Ortiz must face Ustinov on or before June 19, 2016. If a purse bid is necessary, the purse bid split will be 50/50,” said WBA Championships Chairman Gilberto Jesus Mendoza.
Just because the WBA is ruling that Ustinov must face Ortiz doesn’t mean that it will necessarily happen.

It’s not the best match-up for the 6’7” Ustinov, and I would be very surprised if his promoters let him take this risky fight against the southpaw Ortiz because it’s a bad match-up for Ustinov. Ortiz is a better puncher than him, and he’s got better hand speed and excellent size.

Ustinov has won his last six fights since being stopped in the 11th round by Kubrat Pulev in 2012, but he’s not fought anyone in the same class as Ortiz during the last three years. Even Pulev isn’t in the same class as Ortiz. I don’t think Ustinov would do well if he were to take the fight against Ortiz because he would match-up better against the likes of Charles Martin, Vyacheslav Glazkov or Deontay Wilder. Ustinov is too easy to hit, and he would have nothing to keep a guy like Ortiz off of him.

Ortiz recently stopped Bryant Jennings in the 7th round last December in a fight televised by HBO from Verona, New York. Ortiz took the fight while battling a case of the flu, and yet he still looked very impressive. Ortiz stopped Jennings with a vicious uppercut to the head.



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