By Scott Gilfoid: Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn says that he offered WBC super bantamweight champion Leo Santa Cruz a unification fight against his fighter WBA 122 pound champion Scott Quigg (28-0-2, 21 KOs), but he chose not to take the fight, Hearn said.

So instead of Hearn matching Quigg against Santa Cruz, he’s putting him in with #15 IBF fringe contender Paulus Ambunda (21-1, 10 KOs) on September 13th at the Phones 4 U Arena in Manchester.

Quigg’s fight will “be the toughest fight of his career,” Hearn said to the Dailymail.co.uk.

Ambunda will be the toughest fight of Quigg’s career, eh? Just so you know; Ambunda was just beaten by Tomoki Kameda by a 12 round unanimous decision last year in September.

Ambunda’s got decent power and hand speed, but he doesn’t throw nearly enough punches for him to win rounds convincingly. He waits, and waits and waits before he finally throws a punch. But in the meantime, his opponents have nailed him 10 times by the time he gets one shot off. I can definitely see why Hearn would see Ambunda as an appealing opponent to put in with Quigg. The guy is no threat to him.

“I give Ambunda plenty of credit for taking this fight – it’s been a hard task matching Quigg,” Hearn said. “His [Quigg] devastating knockout of Tshifhiwa Munyai in his last fight has made many in the division much less forthcoming. Scott asked for the Leo Santa Cruz unification but they simply don’t fancy the fight.”

It could be that Santa Cruz wasn’t excited about traveling to the UK and putting his title on the line in a place where he’d be the visiting fighter and perhaps in need of a knockout or a real bad beat down in order to make sure that he doesn’t wind up on the losing end of a bad decision.

It’s easy for Hearn to say that Santa Cruz is avoiding the fight, but a talented fighter like him shouldn’t have to be the one that travels to get his fights.

Hearn would have an excuse to talk if Quigg was the A-side in a fight against Santa Cruz, but that’s not the situation. Santa Cruz is arguably the A-side here, so he shouldn’t have to travel to the UK in order to fight a guy that most casual boxing fans have never heard of in their life in the U.S.

Hearn went on to say that he hopes to match Quigg up against Carl Frampton in the near future if he can beat IBF super bantamweight champion Kiko Martinez in their fight in September.