Carl Frampton-Leo Santa Cruz Eyed For Late July, August

By Edward Chaykovsky

According to WBA/IBF super bantamweight world champion Carl Frampton (22-0), his showdown with WBA featherweight champion Leo Santa Cruz (32-0) will take place in late July or August.

Showtime recently announced that a deal had been agreed upon in principle for "a championship match-up to be scheduled for late summer”.

Frampton is ready for the contest and does not care if it takes place in the United States. He's very confident of a dealing being finalized and the fight taking place.

“They’re talking about the end of July or August if it gets done, so hopefully it does. I’m confident enough that it’ll get made. I doubt it will be here, it’ll be America - it would be good to be on the east coast, but it might be in Vegas, who knows?,” Frampton told Irish News.

If the fight happens, Frampton may be forced to vacate both of his titles. He owes a mandatory defense to both sanctioning organizations. And while he thinks Santa Cruz is capable of going back down to 122, he's willing to go up in weight to face the Mexican fighter at 126.

“It’s very appealing to me,” said Frampton. “I think Santa Cruz could do super-bantam, but if have to go to featherweight [I would]. I wouldn’t go to featherweight for a no-mark, it would need to be a big fight for a world title. He obviously is a big name and there’s other big names at featherweight, but I promise this is the easiest I’ve made super-bantamweight. There’s options at this weight and there’s options above.”

His manager and promoter Barry McGuigan expects the fight to be a lot more exciting than Frampton's recent decision win over Scott Quigg.

“There’s a number of possibilities. We are going to look at the money fights and the money fight is Santa Cruz, that’s a great fight. He’s a volume puncher, non-stop, he walks you down and it would be a breathtaking fight. The difference between Santa Cruz and Scott Quigg is that Scott didn’t want to throw punches. He was so apprehensive because he was being hit hard and he didn’t want to let them go. Santa Cruz does let them go and it would be a fabulous fight,” McGuigan said.