By Miguel Rivera
There is now a void in the WBC's welterweight rankings. Earlier this year, the World Boxing Council announced a welterweight tournament to clean up their rankings after their longtime champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. retired last September.
Danny Garcia vs. Robert Guerrero was sanctioned for the vacant WBC welterweight belt. Last month Garcia won a twelve round unanimous decision over Guerrero to pick up that title.
Garcia was ordered make a mandatory defense against Amir Khan by the month of June.
Most were expecting Khan to face Garcia or accept a summer showdown with IBF champion Kell Brook. Neither scenario happened. Instead, Khan announced on Tuesday that he was moving up to a catch-weight of 155-pounds to challenge WBC middleweight champion Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez on May 7th in Las Vegas.
Now that Khan has gone in that direction, WBC President Maurcio Sulaiman has confirmed that his organization must determine a new mandatory challenger.
The next obvious choice will be the winner of Lamont Peterson vs. Andre Berto. That fight was ordered to take place as part of the WBC's welterweight tournament and the winner would have been the mandatory challenger to Garcia-Khan. Now that Khan is out of the picture, the Peterson-Berto winner will likely jump directly to a fight with Garcia.
The WBC also ordered two semi-final eliminators. In fight one, Sammy Vasquez stopped Aron Martinez. In the second semi, Miguel Barrionueva knocked out Azael Cosio. Now Vasquez and Barrionueva will be ordered to battle it out to set a future mandatory challenger.
