Guillermo Rigondeaux vs. Jamie McDonnell possible

By Boxing News - 05/14/2016 - Comments

Image: Guillermo Rigondeaux vs. Jamie McDonnell possibleBy Scott Gilfoid: A year after having his WBA ‘super’ bantamweight title taken from him by the World Boxing Association for failing to defend it on a frequent enough basis, the talented super bantamweight Guillermo Rigondeaux (16-0, 10 KOs) has been given his title back.

The WBA decided to give it back to Rigondeaux after they stripped it from Carl Frampton, who won the belt last February in beating Scott Quigg in their unification fight. Frampton was subsequently ordered by the WBA to fight Rigondeaux, but he failed to step up to the plate for that fight, so the WBA had to take the strap from him.

Now the WBA is hoping they can have Rigondeaux defend his WBA strap against either Jamie McDonnell (28-2-1, 13 KOs) or James “Jazza” Dickens (22-1, 7 KOs). I’m not sure if either of those guys will step up to take the fight against Rigondeaux. My guess is Rigondeaux will face someone else. Dickens would probably take the right with Rigondeaux, but he has a fight next month against Abigail Medina on June 4 for the vacant EBU super bantamweight title, and
I expect Dickens to lose that fight. Since it would look REALLY bad for Rigondeaux to be fighting Jazza with him coming off a loss, I think Rigondeaux will wind up having to fight someone else.

Like I said, I don’t see the 5’10” McDonnell moving up in weight to risk his hide against Rigondeaux. No way do I see that fight happening. McDonnell has it pretty easy fighting over-matched guys at bantamweight. I’m still waiting for McDonnell to fight someone good after all these years. He’s getting great match-matching.

WBA president Gilberto Mendoza Junior wants to have a tournament involving Rigondeaux, Jazza, McDonnell, Moises Flores, Paulus Ambunda, Nehomar Cermeno and Jun Qiu Xiao. It sounds good in theory, but I’m not sure it’ll work out. The WBA might as well pick out the best two fighters of that bunch right now and have them fight. They could save time. Rigondeaux would be one of them and perhaps Flores would be the other. But the tournament won’t work if none of them wants to fight Rigondeaux.

The last thing the WBA needs is to have the finalist in the tournament decide he wants no part of fighting Rigondeaux, and then the tournament goes to pieces at the very end. Rigondeaux would then win the tourney by default. I’m sure the WBA would find a substitute for Rigondeaux to fight in that case, but the tournament would be finished if an outside fighter was brought in or if Rigondeaux wound up fighting someone that had already been beaten in the tournament.

“We had differences with Rigondeaux’s team, but we mediated,” Mendoza told ESPN Deportes. “After negotiations we came to the decision that he would be reinstated as a super champion. He was the undisputed champion, but given that he didn’t have a fight for a long time, he was declared the champion in recess. We hope it would come against James Dickens or Jamie McDonnell, who was also mentioned.”

The 35-year-old Rigondeaux fought only once in 2015 in beating Drian Francisco by a lopsided 10 round decision last November on the Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez PPV card on HBO. It was not a great performance by Rigondeaux, who mostly played it safe for the entire fight.

I like the idea of a tournament to try and force some of the top 122lb fighters to face Rigondeaux rather than ducking him like we’d been seeing, I have doubts whether even a tournament would force guys to fight Rigondeaux. I just don’t have much faith in the participants in the tournament agreeing to fight Rigondeaux when it came their turns to fight the talented Cuban. Rigondeaux wanted to fight Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg in the past, but he could never get either of them to face him. Frampton has since moved up to featherweight, where he’ll be facing Leo Santa Cruz next. Quigg is still at 122, but I can’t see him ever agreeing to fight Rigondeaux. Why isn’t Quigg one of the names in the WBA’s tournament? That’s what I want to know. I think the tournament won’t work. These aren’t big names and it’ll only setup a sacrificial lamb for Rigondeaux to clown at the end of the tournament in my view.