By Chris Williams: Errol Spence Jr is ready to swoop in and relieve Yordenis Ugas of his newly upgraded WBA ‘Super’ welterweight title that the sanctioning body stripped from the inactive Manny Pacquiao on Friday.
IBF/WBC welterweight champion Spence (27-0, 21 KOs) said on Friday that the only thing he needed for him to fight Ugas (26-4, 12 KOs) was for him to have a belt. Now that he does, Spence is ready to add another strap to his collection.
If Spence captures the WBA title, he would be one belt away from becoming the undisputed champion at welterweight.
The last man standing in Errol’s way at that point would be WBO belt-holder Terence Crawford. Setting up a fight against Crawford could prove to be difficult if not impossible due to the Top Rank fighter wanting to be the A-side with him getting the 60-40 purse split.
Unless Crawford sees comes back to earth and agrees to take the smaller 40% that Spence is offering him, that fight won’t happen. Spence would need to wait until Crawford gets beaten, possibly by Vergil Ortiz Jr this year before he can go after his WBO belt.
Hopefully, Crawford sees the light and negotiates Spence’s fight before he loses his belt against the talented Ortiz Jr (16-0, 16 KOs).
all you needed was something I want 🤝#strapseason
— Errol Spence (@ErrolSpenceJr) January 29, 2021
“I have it. We are going to do it for three online championships. Let’s give the fans a great fight. I’m ready,” said Yordenis Ugas on Twitter.
“I don’t want this position for easy fights. My team has my consent for my next fight to fight Pacquiao if he wants to show who he is the true WBA champion or another.”
It won’t be hard for Spence and Ugas to put a unification fight together, considering that they’re both with Premier Boxing Champions [PBC]. Also, they want to make the fight happen from the sounds of it.
Spence was hoping to fight Pacquiao two years ago after he schooled Mikey Garcia in 2019, but the Filipino star failed to face him. Errol’s trainer Derrick James thinks Pacquiao lost his nerve after attending Spence’s fight against Mikey and saw how good he was.
According to James, Pacquiao was supposed to fight the winner of the Spence vs. Mikey fight, but after Errol totally dominated Garcia, Manny decided he didn’t want it.
Some boxing fans feel that Pacquiao was only planning on fighting Mikey, and that’s the only reason he showed up at the fight.
When Spence flipped the script by beating Mikey, Pacquiao went in the other direction to face the over-the-hill Keith ‘One Time’ Thurman in July 2020.
With the Filipino star Pacquiao showing no signs of defending his WBA 147-pound title after winning it one and half years ago against Keith Thurman in July 2019, the World Boxing Association finally did the sensible thing by stripping Manny of his title and upgrading ‘regular’ champion Ugas to the full champ.
Ugas, 34, is willing to defend his upgraded WBA title against Pacquiao (62-7-2, 39 KOs) if he’s interested. It doesn’t look like he will be, though. In the latest news, Pacquiao and Ryan ‘Kingry’ Garcia are planning on fighting a 10-round exhibition.
That move by Pacquiao might have been the straw that broke the camel’s back, forcing the WBA to strip him. It’s not that the sanctioning body would be against Pacquiao taking an exhibition match. It’s more of a case of Pacquiao not showing signs of returning to the ring to defend his WBA title.
The WBA can’t let their champions sit on their titles without defending them year after year while the contenders just sit inactively. Pacquiao should have defended his WBA strap a long time ago, but it’s been dormant all this time.
Ugas has won his last three fights since losing a highly controversial 12 round split decision to Shawn Porter in 2019. Many boxing fans believe that Ugas got royally robbed by the judges that night.
Indeed, Chris Williams had Ugas winning by a 118-110 score in a one-sided affair. Ugas did a better job against Porter than Spence did, but he didn’t get the decision. Interestingly, Porter chose not to clear up the controversy by giving Ugas a badly needed rematch.