By Chris Williams: WBA/WBO super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux (13-0, 8 KOs) is already looking past his opponent for this Saturday night against 37-year-old Sod Looknongyangtoy (63-2-1, 28 KOs) towards some much, much bigger fights in the near future.
Rigondeaux wants to get rid of Looknongyangtoy, and then look to fight unification matches against IBF champion Kiko Martinez and WBC champion Leo Santa Cruz in the near future before moving up in weight to featherweight where there are a number of big named fighters for him to face such as Nonito Donaire, Vasyl Lomachenko, Jhonny Gonzalez, Abner Mares, Evgeny Gradovich and Nicholas Walters.
“I would like for my next fight to be a unification of titles, by fighting either the 122 WBC champ Santa Cruz, or the 122 IBF champ Kiko Martinez,” said Rigondeaux to RingTV.com. “Of course, most are hesitant to fight me. But once I get the opportunity to win another belt, I will see my options to possibly move up in weight.”
The Rigondeaux vs. Looknongyangtoy fight will be taking place this Saturday at the Cotai Arena, Venetian Resort, Macao, Macao S.A.R., China. The fight won’t be televised by HBO, who opted not to show the fight for some reason.
Rigondeaux might need to wait a while before he gets a crack at Kiko Martinez’s IBF title, because he’s got a fight against Carl Frampton next September. If Frampton wins that fight then it’s not a realistic option for Rigondeaux to waste time and energy waiting for Frampton to fight him because he’s not shown any interest in doing that, and it might take Rigondeaux to grow old before he would be interested in taking that fight.
If Santa Cruz chooses not to face Rigondeaux as well, then he’s going to need to considering moving up in weight otherwise he’ll be stuck defending his tittles against little known opposition for the remainder of his career. Rigondeaux has the kind of talent to where he could remain a champion for 5-7 years if all he does is defend against the contenders in the division. He needs to move up in weight to try and shame Donaire into fighting him again.
Rigondeaux whipped Donaire last year in an easy 12 round decision win. Donaire said he wanted to try and avenge the loss initially, but instead of doing that, he went in a different directly by moving up in weight to featherweight.
Comments are closed.