By Scott Gilfoid: The World Boxing Council has done #1 WBC Sakio Bika 31-5-2, 21 KO’s) and #4 WBC Marco Antonio Periban (20-0, 13 KO’s) a HUGE favor by stripping the WBC super middleweight title from injured champion Andre Ward and letting Bika and Periban to fight for the title.
It was announced this week that the WBC has approved the Bika vs. Periban fight to battle for Ward’s WBC super middleweight title for this fight rather than just having it as a normal fight. The WBC has given Ward the Emeritus tag, which gives him the right to come back and fight the winner of the Bika-Periban fight as soon as his injured shoulder heals if Ward still wants the fight.
That’s not exactly an ideal situation for Ward because it forces him to fight one of these guys and use up a valuable fight beating someone that few boxing fans really care to see. Ward has already beaten Bika by a 12 round unanimous decision three years ago, and there was nothing in that fight that would suggest that Bika will ever be able to beat Ward even if they were to fight 100 times.
Periban, 28, is one of those fighters that the WBC has decided to rank highly despite him never faced anyone good before. It’s really odd ranking the WBC has given Periban and you have to wonder what they were thinking when they pushed him up so high in the ranking because his resume doesn’t show the quality of opposition for him to be ranked in the top 5. Periban’s best wins have come against journeyman Darnell Boone, Samuel Miller and Francisco Sierra.
Bika will win this fight because Periban is nothing special and the then rankings will sort themselves out as far as Periban goes with his inflated #4 ranking by the WBC, but it does put Ward in a tough situation where he’ll have waste a valuable fight by beating Bika again to get his WBC title.
It’s almost not even worth it for Ward to do that. He should just let Bika keep the WBC title and focus instead on defending his WBA title and then going after IBF champion Carl Froch, WBO champ Robert Stieglitz and Mikkel Kessler. There’s payoff wasting four months of his career beating Bika for a second time.
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