by Steve Kim

Despite Julius Indongo - who is now the unified WBA and IBF 140-pound champion after defeating Ricky Burns a few weeks ago - claiming a wrist injury, Sergey Lipinets is still in position to fight for the IBF belt sooner rather than later.

Currently, the undefeated Lipinets is the IBF mandatory challenger.

"Our rights are solid," said Alex Vaysfeld of Union Boxing Management, which handles the hard-hitting Kazak. "Indongo has to fight Lipinets or vacate the belt. He can do unification, he can fight whoever he wants to fight. We understand the money whatever he's looking for. But if he wants to defend the IBF belt in a pile with the other belts that he has - he has to fight Lipinets.

"That's a solid position the IBF has There is no unification where the IBF is in the pile."

There's been some speculation of Indongo facing Terence Crawford (who wons the WBO and WBC belts) next but Vaysfeld insisted - ''There's no way he can do anything with the IBF unless he fights Lipinets. That's the bottom line."

Lindsey Tucker, the Championship Chairman of the IBF said of Indongo - "They claim they were injured after we sent out the purse bid letter so we postponed the purse bid pending verification of the injury and once we verify he's injured and then he'll have a certain amount of time to resume with the purse bid and go from there.

Tucker confirmed to BoxingScene that having a unification about involving the IBF is now out of the question, for the time being.

"It's too late now because once we sent the letter out, Lipinets called for an immediate purse bid. Once that happens you can't come back and say,'By the way, I want to do a unification or I want an exception,'' he explained.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com