In a recent interview on BoxingScene.com, Luis Ortiz' manager indicated that WBA, IBF, IBO heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (19-0, 19 KOs) had until September 3 to agree to fight or face the possibility of getting stripped of the WBA belt.
Ortiz is the mandatory challenger to Joshua's WBA title.
The British superstar has other obligations. He also has a mandatory owed to the IBF, that was ordered way before the shot which is owed to Ortiz.
Joshua plans to satisfy the obligation to the IBF on October 28th, when he faces mandatory challenger Kubrat Pulev of Bulgaria.
While Ortiz will move to have Joshua stripped - promoter Eddie Hearn is confident the Cuban boxer will not be successful with that move.
He believes Ortiz is attempting to get step aside money while - at the same time - finalizing a deal to face WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in November.
“Ortiz is hoping that we get stripped and he gets handed the title. It won’t work like that. If they stripped us we would appeal and that process takes a long time and they’ve got no right to strip us. We’ve got to face our first mandatory,” Hearn told Boxing News.
“We had an exception to fight [Eric] Molina, then we had an exception via a unification to fight [Wladimir] Klitschko and now we’re out [of exceptions]. We’ve got no more chances. But to be honest if we had a voluntary, Pulev would be the guy we’d be looking at anyway… It’s a really good fight.”
"Following the rules for a unified champion you have to go chronologically in terms of when the mandatories are ordered. The IBF mandatory was ordered nearly a year ago and the WBA one was ordered a couple of months ago. We really want to fight Luis Ortiz in February or March and we’ll do a deal to fight him now.
"I think what they want is they want to fight Wilder, plus get some step aside [money] from us. So that’s what they’re working on and I don’t see why we should. If the rules are going to be followed, which I think they will be, then I don’t think we need to give him step aside. We’d rather he didn’t fight Wilder and we’d rather he fought Joshua. We’ll give a fight at the Millennium stadium, he can have a nice warm up and then we’ll do the fight in February or March.”