ORLANDO, Fla. – Unified junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora was expected to face former three-belt welterweight champion Errol Spence Jr. next, but in this fight, Only one belt will be online.
An official involved in the decision told BoxingScene on Friday that the World Boxing Organization has ruled that Fondola Spence will not be sanctioned as a world title contender for a number of reasons related to Spence’s stance.
In the eyes of the WBO, this fight will be allowed to proceed as a non-title fight, and Fundora will retain the belt by winning.
But if Southern California player Fondola loses to Spence, his gold belt will be taken away and handed to the fourth-level boxing champion and current World Boxing Association junior middleweight champion Terrence Crawford—— He is currently the interim holder of the WBO 154-pound belt.
Fundola, who has a 21-1-1 record (13 KOs), also wore the World Boxing Council with a bloody narrow victory over Tim Tszyu on March 30 in Las Vegas. gold belt. The WBC gold belt is expected to be played.
However, the WBO determined that Spence, a Texas native with 28 wins and 1 loss (22 KOs), did not meet the standards required to compete for the belt for the following main reasons:
– Spence, 34, has not fought since a ninth-round technical knockout loss to Crawford in July 2023, in which Spence was knocked down three times before the fight was suspended. .
– He’s coming off a tough knockout loss and has never competed at junior middleweight.
– is not among the WBO’s top 15 junior middleweights, despite his application at the recent WBO convention in Puerto Rico.
“if [the WBO] Allowing Spence to fight for the belt sets a bad precedent for others,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ruling of the fight, which is still under negotiation.
There is no official date or location for the Fundola-Spence fight, but at this week’s WBC convention in Hamburg, Germany, Fundola told BoxingScene, “That’s our next fight.”
After Fundora defeated Tszyu, Spence appeared in the ring and started hyping up the matchup.
Spence has since broken up after expressing concerns about the impact of his 2019 Ferrari crash on his health Derrick James, Spence has been his coach since his amateur days.
Fundola said he doesn’t expect to fight a smaller version of Spence.
“No one has reason to doubt him. He has been a champion for a long time,” Fundola said. “He defended the IBF multiple times, he fought [Shawn] Porter, he and [Yordenis] Ugas. I don’t know why people ignore him. We would never do that. We see Spence as always and I think everyone should expect a great fight from him. “
Lance Pugmire is an American senior writer at BoxingScene and an associate producer at ProBox TV. Pugmire has covered boxing since the early 2000s, first with the Los Angeles Times, then The Athletic and USA Today. In 2022, he received the Nat Fleischer Award from the Boxing Writers Association of America for career excellence.
