Leo Santa Cruz: record, next fight and profile →
IBF featherweight champion Josh Warrington is still eager to have a unification showdown with WBA champion Leo Santa Cruz. Santa Cruz holds the WBA's 'super title' at 126-pounds, while Leigh Wood is the "regular" champion.
The title consolidation fight between Leo Santa Cruz and Leigh Wood will head to a purse bid at some point. When that day arrives is up to the World Boxing Association (WBA), who has spent the past several weeks reviewing an appeal from Wood’s team regarding the final purse split for their forthcoming featherweight title fight. The matter was expected to be resolved sometime in the second and third week of May, though that deadline has obviously passed as the matter now creeps into the first week of June.
Leo Santa Cruz has 30 days to decide whether he plans to return to featherweight. An ordered title consolidation fight nearly a month in the making was finally called by the World Boxing Association (WBA), as Santa Cruz has been summoned to defend his WBA ‘Super’ featherweight belt against England’s Leigh Wood, the reigning WBA ‘World’ titlist at the weight. The sanctioning body vowed last summer to bring closure to the featherweight division, making good on that promise in its latest ruling.
Josh Warrington admits that a summer fight with Leigh Wood looks unlikely now as he recovers from a broken jaw. Warrington suffered the injury moments before his seventh-round stoppage of Kiko Martinez to regain his IBF featherweight title last weekend.
Newly crowned IBF featherweight champion Josh Warrington suffered a broken jaw in his stunning stoppage win over Kiko Martinez on Saturday night in Leeds.
Nobody would blame Leigh Wood for seeking out a soft touch after what he had to endure in his latest win. The chance of settling for anything less than an A-list opponent next time out, however, are as slim as Wood backing down from a challenge.
Leo Santa Cruz would welcome a fight with the newly crowned champion who upset Gary Russell Jr. next. If Russell gets the opportunity to fight Mark Magsayo again, though, the four-division champion considers a subsequent bout with Russell viable if Russell were to win back his title. Russell didn’t have a rematch clause in his contract for the Magsayo bout because the WBC doesn’t allow such items in deals for mandated title fights.
LAS VEGAS – Jose Santa Cruz doesn’t want his son to fight at the 130-pound limit again. Leo Santa Cruz requested another 130-pound fight against Keenan Carbajal last Saturday night because his long layoff worried the former four-division champion. Fifteen months passed between his devastating defeat to Gervonta Davis and his return to the ring on the Keith Thurman-Mario Barrios undercard at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino’s Michelob ULTRA Arena, enough time for Santa Cruz to have reached 154 pounds prior to the start of camp early in November for the Carbajal clash.
LAS VEGAS – Now that he has ended a 15-month layoff, Leo Santa Cruz wants to challenge the undefeated fighter who knocked off Gary Russell Jr.
Keith Thurman is back. No matter what happens from here, the once-unified welterweight titlist made his way back to the ring after more than two years away and while fighting in only one calendar year since 2017. Thurman returned doing what he’s done all but once in his career.