Leo Santa Cruz: record, next fight and profile →
Carl Frampton unanimously outpointed previously undefeated champion Leo Santa Cruz on Saturday night to take the WBA super featherweight title. Frampton, from Northern Ireland, improved to 23-0. Santa Cruz, from Mexico, dropped to 32-1-1.
By Terence Dooley - Frampton (23-0, 14KOs) moves up in weight and becomes a two division world champion with a twelve round majority decision over previously undefeated Leo Santa Cruz (32-1-1, 18KOs) to capture the WBA featherweight world title. The scores were 114-114 a draw, 116-112 and...
Santa Cruz vs. Frampton Scorecard - It's cliched but it's true; all things being equal, the good big man will always defeat the good little man. Given that the slightly bigger Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 KOs) also has an edge over Frampton (22-0, 14 KOs) in power, quality of opposition and punch resistance, the outcome of this fight seems like a no-brainer.
New York - Although Mexican slugger Leo Santa Cruz (32-0-1, 18 KO's) resides California and his fight with UK's Carl Frampton (22-0, 14 KO's) is on US soil, the trip to Brooklyn where the fight will take place in the Barclays Center is about equal in distance in terms of travel between California and the United Kingdom.
New York - Carl Frampton (22-0,14 KO's) fought in front of a sold out M.E.N. Arena in Manchester when he defeated Scott Quigg earlier this year. So how does he top that? Move up a weight class to fight one of the top featherweights in the world in Leo Santa Cruz (32-0-1,18 KO's), and do it in the United States. All eyes of the boxing world and Frampton believes his fight with Santa Cruz if the biggest and toughest fight of his career.
This will be Carl Frampton’s first fight at featherweight in a long time. He was between 124 and 126 pounds for four of his first six fights. But otherwise Frampton has long been a junior featherweight. He left that division in February after unifying two world titles at 122, opting both for the options at featherweight as well as the leeway on the scale after what he said was a year and a half of difficulty making weight.
For most of the last twenty years, we have been able to count on the area of the scale once considered classic featherweight. 122 and 126 lbs. have delivered too many times to count. We thought it might earlier this year in a unification clash between Carl Frampton and Scott Quigg. Frampton boxed too well for too long to let a classic break out.
Leo Santa Cruz is the American fighter in the main event in New York City, but it’s not like he has the home country advantage. Santa Cruz hails from California, after all, and in his 33-fight career he has only fought on the East Coast of the United States twice before — once in 2009 in Pennsylvania and once in 2010 in Maryland.
Showtime Sports executive Stephen Espinoza is excited about Saturday night’s featherweight title fight between Leo Santa Cruz and Carl Frampton, not only for what the bout itself could be on fight night, but also because of how it plays into the bigger picture.
Carl Frampton’s promoter believes Leo Santa Cruz avoided Frampton when both were competing in the junior featherweight division. Now Santa Cruz is a featherweight titleholder, and he will be defending against Frampton on Saturday night at Barclays Center.