Official: Hamzah Sheeraz belt of choice is WBO

With three super middleweight belts to choose from, England’s Hamzah Sheeraz intends to fight unbeaten Diego Pacheco for the WBO strap left vacant by the retirement of Terence Crawford.

An individual close to the situation told BoxingScene Tuesday that a January 19 purse bid for the fight will bring further clarity to the matter.

Sheeraz manager Spencer Brown told IFL TV that Sheeraz was also entertaining his option to fight Canada’s unbeaten WBC interim super-middleweight champion Christian Mbilli.

“I think the Mbilli fight is the obvious option for Hamzah Sheeraz,” Brown said.

Yet, Sheeraz promoter Frank Warren of Queensberry Promotions has provided assurance the WBO belt is Sheeraz’s belt of choice. 

Sheeraz 22-0-1 (18KOs) is the WBO No. 3 contender, right behind former undisputed champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, 63-3-2 (39 KOs) and South Central Los Angeles’ Pacheco 25-0 (18KOs). 

Alvarez is unavailable to challenge for any of his old belts, as he continues to recover from surgery performed in October. That left Pacheco and Sheeraz as the WBO’s two highest rated available challengers to compete for its vacant super middleweight title.

Sheeraz is coming off a July fifth-round knockout of Alvarez’s 2024 title challenger Edgar Berlanga in Queens, New York. 

Pacheco, 24, performed in three lackluster points victories last year versus Steven Nelson, Trevor McCumby and Kevin Lele Sadjo. He was knocked down in the latter bout in December before recovering to win a unanimous decision.

Sheeraz was also positioned by the IBF for a title shot versus top-ranked Osleys Iglesias of Cuba. However, he declined to move forward with the offered invitation to enter negotiations given his already overbooked commitments with the abovementioned sanctioning bodies.

Lance Pugmire is BoxingScene’s senior U.S. writer and an assistant producer for ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first at the Los Angeles Times and then at The Athletic and USA Today. He won the Boxing Writers’ Association of America’s Nat Fleischer Award in 2022 for career excellence.