By Dan Ambrose: The winner of the December 3rd fight between undefeated welterweight contender Mike Jones (25-0, 19 KO’s) and Sebastian Lujan (38-5-2, 24 KO’s) will be facing No.2 ranked IBF contender Randall Bailey (42-7, 36 KO’s) for the vacant International Boxing Federation welterweight title in 2012. Jones, 28, is expected to beat Lujan in their December match-up, which puts Jones in with the hard hitting Bailey for the vacant IBF strap.

A Jones-Bailey fight will be a real battle between two sluggers. Jones hits hard and is huge for a welterweight at 6’0″, but the 5’9″ Bailey has one-punch knockout power early in his fights. If he can land one of his big shots against the inexperienced Jones, we could see Bailey emerging as the new IBF champion. The former champion, Andre Berto, decided to vacate the title rather than face Bailey and/or Jones. Berto wants to fight a rematch against Victor Ortiz because it’s a better paying fight, and he did reasonably well against Ortiz until gassing out in the second half of their fight last April.

Jones has improved a lot since beating Jesus Soto Karass by a controversial 10 round majority decision last year in November 2010. Jones came back and defeated Karass by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last February. The difference here is that Jones used more movement and focused on throwing his jab and quick combinations. However, he still showed a lot of lapses on the defensive side of his game which allowed Karass to land a lot of hard shots in that fight. Still, Jones should be more than good enough to beat the Argentinian Lujan in December. Lujan is a lot like Karass but a little stronger. Jones needs to avoid getting into a war with Lujan because that kind of fight doesn’t favor Jones. He’s a lot better fighter when he’s hitting and moving than when he stands and trades.