Lamont Roach is poised to be stripped of his WBA super featherweight title the moment he steps in the ring on Saturday against WBC interim light welterweight champion Isaac ‘Pitbull’ Cruz.
Roach’s Belt Gone on Entry
WBA interim 130-lb champion James ‘Jazza’ Dickens will be automatically elevated the moment Roach faces ‘Pitbull’ Cruz on Saturday.
Tsutsumi Lurking on Dec 27
Dickens (36-5, 15 KOs) will be defending the WBA super featherweight crown against #3 Hayato Tsutsumi (8-0, 5 KOs) this month on December 27th at the Mohammed Abdo Arena, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Jazza’s time as the WBA champion could be brief, with him likely losing it immediately against the former Japanese amateur talent Tsutsumi.
This is Turki Alalshikh’s Ring V: Night of the Samurai card on DAZN PPV. The price of the event is $59.99 for U.S and Canadian fans and £24.99 for the UK public.
Turki’s Samurai Card Breakdown
Some fans have questioned whether this card rates as pay-per-view-worthy, given that the main event between Naoya Inoue and David Picasso is viewed as a mismatch, and the same goes for the co-feature, Junto Nakatani vs. Sebastian Hernandez Reyes.
You’d have to be a big fan of Inoue and Junto to want to pay to watch them destroy overmatched opposition in non-competitive fights. Turki dropped the ball on this one and should have just pulled the trigger on matching Inoue against Nakatani instead of having a couple of mismatches along with the Jazza vs. Tsutsumi fight. Those are not competitive fights on paper.
Roach Chasing Bigger Money
Roach (25-1-2, 10 KOs) has chosen to sacrifice his WBA 130-lb belt to go in the direction of bigger paydays at 140 and 135, starting with his clash against ‘Pitbull’ Cruz (28-3-1, 18 KOs).
Staying at 130 Was Risky
It’s a wise decision for Roach, as if he had stayed at 130, he’d be defending against WBA mandatory Hayato Tsutsumi. That would have been a tough fight for Lamont to win, and there’s a good chance he’d have lost his belt.
Roach didn’t have much of a reign as the WBA 130-lb champion. After winning the belt by an unimpressive, razor-close 12-round split decision against Hector Luis Garcia on November 25, 2023, he made one voluntary defense of the title against little-known Feargal McCrory in June 2024, then moved up to lightweight to challenge WBA champion Gervonta Davis in March 2025.
Rabbit Punch Memory Still Stings
If Roach’s side, he made the right move in giving up his WBA 130-lb title, because he looked good enough in his fight against Hector Garcia to hold onto that belt against Tsutsumi. He arguably should have lost to Hector, but got credit for a textbook rabbit punch knockdown in the 12th round.
If the referee had the right call, Roach would have lost the fight because Hector was winning the 12th round before being dropped by a punch to the back of the head. It was painfully apparent that it was a rabbit punch, but the referee, for some reason, couldn’t see it.