A hard conversation will take place among the team surrounding Leigh Wood.
As previously reported by BoxingScene.com, the WBA featherweight belt is at stake only for Wood in his currently scheduled rematch versus Mauricio Lara. A pre-fight week check deemed it unsafe for Mexico City’s Lara to perform the type of weight necessary to get down to the featherweight limit. The British Boxing Board of Control (BBBofC) ruled that he could not weigh less than 128 ½ pounds on Friday, though anything extremely beyond that mark would have been grounds to cancel their DAZN headliner outright.
Wood was 125.9 pounds and thus still eligible to fight for the title he lost to Lara just 13 weeks ago. Lara had to strip to get to 129.8 pounds, nearly a full division above the featherweight limit.
The development has produced mixed emotions among Wood’s team.
“Realistically, this shouldn’t be happening, should it,” Ben Davison, Wood’s trainer told DAZN’s Chris Lloyd and Darren Barker after Lara’s miserable scale fail. “It’s a disgrace, to be honest. Nothing against Mauricio Lara and their whole team, they were respectful throughout. But it’s in absolute shambles.
“We’ll have to go away and talk about this ourselves, look at the situation. He’s a dangerous fighter anyway. He had to struggle to get to where he got to, so we have to take that into consideration. Leigh’s whole thing has been to become a two-time world champion. That’s his whole motivation behind this.”
The WBA confirmed in the aftermath that Lara was relieved of his title reign.
Davison reluctantly permitted Wood (26-3, 16KOs) to move forward only because it was important to the former WBA featherweight titlist to fight for his old title. Wood suffered a seventh-round knockout in a fight where he led on all three scorecards prior to the stoppage on February 18 at Motorpoint Arena in his hometown of Nottingham, England.
Ironically, it was Davison who called for referee Michael Alexander to halt the contest, literally throwing in the towel after Wood beat the count. The safety of his fighter was of grave concern to the trainer, who wasn’t thrilled with the late development surrounding Saturday’s rematch, which headlines a DAZN show from AO Arena in Manchester.
There is concern as to why the fight will proceed with a full weight division separating the main event participants. What never crossed Wood’s mind, however, was weighing above the featherweight limit to level the playing field, given his desire to become a two-time titleholder.
“We heard about his weight while Leigh’s on weight,” explained Davison. “There’s no point in going, ‘Oh Leigh, let’s just bring you up [in weight].’ There’s going to be smart asses who will ‘Why didn’t you bring him up from championship weight?’ What’s the point in then Leigh not being able to win the title?
“We knew by the time Leigh had made championship weight. We heard about the situation where he missed the check weight. The Board weren’t going to allow him to make weight anyway. But by the look of that, he wouldn’t have gotten anywhere near that championship weight. By the time we knew where he was at, Leigh was already at championship weight.”
A win by Wood will likely trigger a mandatory title defense versus Otabek Khlomatov (11-0, 10KOs). Regardless of how Saturday plays out, Khlomatov will be in line to challenge for the title, whether versus Wood or even number-two contender Raymond Ford (14-0-1, 7KOs) who was already prepared to next face the unbeaten Uzbek.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
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