By Stanley White: WBA World lightweight champion Jorge Linares (43-3, 27 KOs) will be making a voluntary defense against #12 IBF Mercito Gesta (31-1-2, 17 KOs) in 2 months from now on January 27 at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
There was talk of Linares fighting a unification fight with Mikey Garcia. However, Garcia chose to pull out of the negotiations. He has a better deal. It’s believes that Garcia will face IBF champion Robert Easter Jr. next.
Linares has looked nearly unbeatable in winning his last 12 fights since losing back to back fights to Sergio Thompson and Antonio DeMarco. Linares has dominated everyone since then. The only guy that has given him problems is Luke Campbell.
This is not the fight that British promoter Eddie Hearn wanted to see. He was hoping that Linares would face his fighter #3 WBA Luke Campbell (17-2, 14 KOs) in a rematch. Linares defeated Campbell by a 12 round split decision in his last fight on September 23 in Inglewood, California. However, Campbell, Hearn and many British boxing fans felt that Linares didn’t do enough to deserve the victory.
Hearn believes that there’s a good chance that Linares will come over to the UK in April and fight Campbell in a rematch. Hearn is obviously going to try and make a temping enough offer to get Linares, 32, to come over to the UK to face Campbell in April.
Linares has a done a number on Hearn’s British fighters from his Matchroom Sport stable, as he’s beaten 3 of them now. Linares went over to the UK and twice beat Anthony Crolla, and before that, he retired Kevin Mitchell in stopping him in the 10th round in 2015. Hearn is not likely to give up on trying to find guys from his stable that can beat Linares. Eventually, Hearn will succeed, but Linares could send Campbell’s career into shreds if he beats him a second time. Hearn might want to think about the logic in putting Campbell back in with Linares a second time, because he clearly wasn’t as good as him when he was actually trying.
“I know that Gesta has speed and power, but he hasn’t been at this level before, and on Jan. 27, he’ll know what it’s like to face a world champion,” said Linares.
Gesta, 30, did fight for a world title once before in his career in losing a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision to former IBF World lightweight champion Miguel Vazquez on December 8, 2012. The fight was embarrassingly one-sided with Vazquez completely dominating the over-matched Gesta from start to finish. Gesta looked like he didn’t belong in the same ring with Vazquez. By the 5th round, Gesta lost whatever confidence he had going into the fight and he did nothing for the remainder of the fight but soak up punishment.
Gesta rebounded from the loss to Vazquez to win fights against low level opponents Edgar Riovalle (37-17-2) and Luis Acelo (28-12). Gesta ran into trouble in fighting to a 10 round draw against Carlos Molina in April 2015. Gesta has looked better since then in beating Miguel Angel Mendoza, Gilberto Gonzalez and Martin Honorio.
If Gesta loses in this attempt at trying to capture a world title against Linares, then it’s unlikely he’ll get a third chance.