Today the WBA announced that it has ordered Leo Santa Cruz and Abner Mares to rematch their excellent 2015 bout in order to further clean up their convoluted title picture.
The original fight, broadcast by Showtime in August of 2015, was the fight that legitimized Santa Cruz after years of criticism due to his history of fighting subpar opposition. It was a very closely fought match in which Santa Cruz won Abner Mares’ WBA Super World Featherweight title. Because the WBA is the WBA, it ordered Mares’ next fight to be for the “Regular” WBA World Featherweight title, a belt that had no reason to exist. He beat Jesus Cuellar for it, and now the WBA is having them “unify” their WBA titles. This is nonsense as the belt that Abner Mares holds is completely illegitimate and therefore can only be unified with another belt in the WBA’s imagination, but I guess an optimist could argue that a weird road to a great destination is still one worth traveling in the end.
Leo Santa Cruz versus Abner Mares II is a great destination, and I very much look forward to the fight should they honor the WBA’s order. I suspect they will.
