By Jim Dower: World Boxing Association super bantamweight champion Celestino Caballero (33-2, 23 KO’s) has been stripped of his IBF super bantamweight crown by the IBF. Caballero was supposed to be fighting number #1 contender Takalani Ndlovu (30-5, 18 KO’s), but according to Dan Rafael, Caballero’s promoter, Warrior Boxing, didn’t have a place to put the Caballero-Ndlovu fight.

Also, Caballero is interested in moving up in weight to the featherweight division to go after a better paying fight against Yuriorkis Gamboa, the WBA featherweight champion. As such, Caballero’s IBF title will now be fought over by former IBF super bantamweight champion Steve Molitor (31-1, 12 KO’s), who will be facing Ndlovu, 32, on March 27th, at the Casino Rama, Rama, Ontario, Canada.

This should be a good situation for Molitor because he already defeated Ndlovu by a 9th round stoppage in July 2007. Molitor later on lost the IBF title by getting destroyed by Caballero in a 4th round TKO loss in November 2008. With Caballero gone, Molitor, 29, might be able to hold onto the IBF title for a little while before runs into someone like Rafael Marquez, Guillermo Rigondeaux, Antonio Escalante or Ricardo Cordoba and ends up getting run over.

Molitor has good boxing skills, but very little power to speak of. He previously held the IBF title from 2007 to 2008, defending it four times against beatable opposition until being totally destroyed by Caballero in 2008. Molitor rebounded from the Caballero loss and has won his last three fights, beating Heriberto Ruiz, Feliciano Dario Azuaga Ledezma and Jose Saez.

For his part, Ndlovu has lost two out of his last five fights in the past three years, but despite his poor luck as of late, the International Boxing Federation, strangely enough, still has Ndlovu ranked as the number #1 contender for some reason over arguably better fighters such as Escalante and Cordoba, to name just a couple.