The WBC is in the midst of its annual convention, staged this year in Acapulco, and spent this morning going through the current states of their suite of champions. ESPN’s Salvador Rodriguez was kind enough to provide division-by-division play-by-play on Twitter, which I will break down into the following categories:
THE GOOD
While Canelo sets his sights on newly crowned light heavyweight champion Willy Hutchinson, the next batch of eliminators will reportedly involve Artur Beterbiev, Radivoje Kalajdzic, Ben
Whittaker, and Imam Khataev, any combination of which could potentially be heaps of fun.
Per promoter Sampson Lewkowicz, super welterweight champion Sebastian Fundora is officially targeting the winner of Jaron “Boots” Ennis vs Josh Kelly for undisputed glory.
Arnold Barboza Jr will fight Oscar Duarte in a January 23rd welterweight eliminator.
Golden Boy declared that they’d avoided a purse bid for William Zepeda’s ordered lightweight title consolidation against interim champ Jadier Herrera, which will land on March 23rd. No idea why we need to wait four more months but it promises to be a firefight for the ages.
In a similar vein to Fundora, newly minted three-belt super featherweight champion O’Shaquie Foster wants the winner of Anthony Cacace vs Nick Ball for all the marbles.
Top featherweight prospect Albert “Chop Chop” Gonzalez has been tabbed to fight Sebastian Hernandez Reyes, who nearly toppled Junto Nakatani last year, in an eliminator. As reported earlier this week, Nakatani will face Ramon Cardenas for interim super bantamweight gold while Naoya Inoue hashes out a fight with “Bam” Rodriguez.
Takuma Inoue’s next bantamweight title defense will come against mandatory challenger Andrew Cain.
THE BAD
The WBC’s hilarious favoritism regarding mandatory defenses, which their rules explicitly state must come once per year. Ryan Garcia is still in his “voluntary” phase despite Souleymane Cissokho winning an eliminator in May of last year, meaning Cissokho must instead fight Alberto Puello for the interim belt. It’s incredible how even being a racist goon won’t stop Sulaiman from bending the rules for you if you make them money.
Speaking of, Canelo apparently gets to decide his next opponent despite Lester Martinez getting screwed out of a rematch with Christian Mbilli to give Canelo the title shot in the first place.
On a similar but less egregious note, they’re still refusing to give Bruce Carrington a mandatory challenger after a year as featherweight champ. Cristobal Lorente won the silver belt in April, but apparently that now only counts as a “semifinal” eliminator and he’ll have to beat Mikito Nakani in January to get his shot.
THE STUPID
Bridgerweight still exists lmao.
