WBA featherweight champion Nick Ball will return to his usual stomping grounds of Liverpool’s Echo Arena to face former two-division titlist Brandon Figueroa on February 7th.
The WBA ordered this bout in October despite Mirco Cuello winning what the sanctioning body specifically called a final eliminator in February. This, alongside the explosion of secondary belts conjured from the aether, is just the latest example of them abandoning every pledge they made following the Mykal Fox vs Gabriel Maestre
debacle.
Ball (23-0-1, 13 KO) defeated Raymond Ford for the belt in an absolute cracker two Junes ago, but his reign to date could charitably be called forgettable. Each of his three defenses came against career super bantamweights, two of them (Ronny Rios and TJ Doheny) past their sell-by dates.
Figueroa (26-2-1, 19 KO), by contrast, is still just 28 and stands a good seven inches taller than Ball. That said, it’s been a rough year for “The Heartbreaker;” a February rematch with Stephen Fulton saw him bizarrely attempt to box with Fulton instead of leaning on the suffocating pressure that carried him to the top and he was more than a little fortunate to get the cards against Joet Gonzalez last July.
Still, if Figueroa’s on his game, this is Fight of the Year material. Everything surrounding it just stinks.
