A third sanctioning body has now ranked Brandon Figueroa as its No. 1 featherweight.
The latest to recognize Figueroa as such is the WBO, which released its monthly ratings update on Thursday. The 28-year-old Texan Figueroa had been ranked second last month, right behind a man he beat for a junior featherweight title in 2021, Luis Nery.
But Nery, whose past two fights have been within the 126lbs limit, plans to move back down to 122, his team said at the WBO’s recent convention. Indeed, he is now slotted No. 4 at junior featherweight.
Figueroa is also ranked first by the WBA and WBC, and fourth by the IBF. There is good reason to wonder whether he’ll remain ranked by three of these organizations much longer.
That’s because the WBA has called for a fight between Figueroa and its featherweight titleholder, Nick Ball. A purse bid was originally supposed to take place last week. No news on Ball-Figueroa has been announced. But when a fighter is in line to vie for one sanctioning body’s title, the others tend to pull that fighter from their lists.
The WBO titleholder is Rafael Espinoza, who is coming off a 10-round stoppage win over Arnold Khegai this past weekend.
After Figueroa, the rest of the WBO’s featherweight ratings has Elijah Pierce in the second spot, followed by Kenji Fujita, Ryuto Owan, Omar Trinidad, Mikito Nakano, Yan Carlos Santana, Liam Davies, Nathaniel Collins, Mateus Heita, Francesco Grandelli, Jan Paul Rivera-Pizarro, Zak Miller, Lorenzo Parra and Albert Gonzalez.
David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.
