By Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten WBO lightweight champion Terry Flanagan (29-0, 12 KOs) is reportedly dealing with tendonitis that will need time for him to heal up from. As such, his previously scheduled fight against challenger Derry Mathews has been moved from 2/13 to 3/12 at the Echo Arena in Liverpool, UK.
You have to hope that the 26-year-old Flanagan’s tendonitis is healed by March, because sometimes those things linger on and on. Speaking for myself, I’d had bouts with tendonitis that has dragged on for six months at a time before finally healing.
Sometimes it takes forever. The last thing Flanagan needs is to come back before his injury has healed and he finds himself fighting at less than 100 percent. Mathews is too good of a fighter for Flanagan to be facing if he isn’t completely healed. I can see the 32-year-old Mathews pulling off an upset under those conditions.
If Flanagan’s injury takes too long to heal, I think it would be good if the WBO gave him one of those Emeritus jobs and clears him out of the way so that a healthy challenger can fight Mathews for the WBO title. Flanagan can always come back as soon as he’s healed and fight for the WBO title against the new champion. I think that’s what the WBO should think about doing if Flanagan’s injury lingers.
Flanagan has it bad enough as it is with #6 WBO Felix Verdejo slowly creeping up the World Boxing Organization’s ranking. I imagine that Flanagan will have a year or so before Verdejo is ranked #1, but that’s still not very much time. Once that fight is upon Flanagan, I see him having to make a big decision. He’ll need to decide whether to vacate his WBO title in order to avoid what will likely be a vicious knockout at the hands of Verdejo, or he can take the fight and just go down with the ship.
It won’t be the end of the world for Flanagan if he gets knocked out by Verdejo. Flanagan can go after one of the other champions in the division. There’s currently four champions in the lightweight division. So if/when Flanagan gets sparked out by Verdejo next year or perhaps in 2018, then he can go after one of the other belt holders to try and capture their title.
Flanagan had it easy in winning the WBO strap last year in beating Jose Zepeda by a 2nd round stoppage after Zepeda suffered a shoulder injury. I’m surprised the fight wasn’t ruled a no contest because it would have made a ton of sense if that’s what they did. How can you have a fighter getting injured in just two rounds and then giving the title to the other guy? That didn’t make sense at all, and I don’t understand it for a second.
In the 5’9 ½” Flanagan’s first defense of his WBO strap, he defeated the much shorter 5’6” Diego Magdaleno by a 2nd round knockout last October. Flanagan knocked Magdaleno down three times in the 2nd round alone in that fight. It was a sick mismatch, and another example of a fighter with an inflated ranking by the WBO. Even now, the WBO’s rankings are upside down with Jose Zepeda ranked #1, Petr Petrov #2, Ricky Burns #3, Michael Perez #4, Daud Yordan #5, and Felix Verdejo #6.
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