By Scott Gilfoid: The WBA recently announced that the winner of the February 27th fight between Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg will need to fight the unbeaten WBA Champion in Recess Guillermo Rigondeaux (16-0, 10 KOs) by July 27th of this year. While that may have sounded nice initially if you are a Rigondeaux fan, it doesn’t mean that the Quigg vs. Frampton winner will wind up facing Rigondeaux.
What it means unfortunately is that the winner of the Frampton-Quigg fight will likely hastily vacate the WBA title after their fight so that they do not need to face Rigondeux. Since the Frampton vs. Quigg fight will have both the IBF and WBA titles on the line, the winner of the fight will be able to keep the IBF title and give up the WBA strap in order not to have to face Rigondeaux.
A fight between Rigondeaux and the winner of the Frampton-Quigg fight wouldn’t be a big deal in the UK, because Rigondeaux comes from Cuba, and he’s not a well-known fighter in the UK like Frampton and Quigg. As such, there’s no upside in Frampton or Quigg choosing to risk their hides facing Rigondeaux. There’s no benefit at all. What there would be would be HUGE risk, and it’s not likely that Frampton or Quigg’s promoters and/or managers would agree to let them fight a real talent like Rigondeaux and likely wind up losing badly to him.
Frampton and Quigg have a good thing going right now fighting guys like Kiko Martinez, Chris Avalos, Hidenori Otaki, Stephane Jamoye and Tshifhiwa Munyai in record padding fights. If Frampton and Quigg were to have to break from that pattern of mismatches to face a real talent like Rigondeaux, I think it would end in disaster for both of them. The thing is once Frampton and Quigg get beaten, you would have to figure that their paydays wouyld drop off in the UK to the point where they wouldn’t be making the same big cash that they’ve been making in facing the above mentioned fighters.
My guess is instead of the winner of the Frampton-Quigg fight facing Rigondeaux, they’ll wind up facing each other in a rematch immediately. This means the winner of the fight will need to vacate the WBA title unless they prefer to have the World Boxing Association strip them of the strap. Of course, the winner of the Frampton vs. Quigg fight could agree to give Rigondeaux a step aside payment so that they could fight each other a second time immediately rather than fighting Rigondeaux by July.
Sorry @RigoElChacal305 – just can't see it happening…
#FramptonQuigg #QuiggFrampton #Rigondeaux pic.twitter.com/0hZtKamIkP
— Boxing Memes (@memes_boxing) January 10, 2016
Do I see that happening? Nope. I think it’s pretty clear that we’re going to see the Frampton-Quigg winner wind up vacating the WBA title and then holding onto the IBF title so that they have some kind of world title to validate themselves in the eyes of the boxing public.
These titles are more like props anyways for some of the champions in the sport for them to wear over their shoulders as they enter the things. Many of the champions nowadays pick up the belts easily by facing less than the best. They then pad their records with a lot of voluntary defenses against bottom ranked contenders in awful to watch mismatches.
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