Newly unified WBA, IBF junior welterweight champion Julius Indongo (22-0, 11 KOs) will not be allowed to finish unifying the belts at 140 against WBC, WBO champion and elite pound for pound fighter Terence Crawford (30, 21 KOs). Instead Indongo’s camp was informed today by the IBF that he must next fulfill his mandatory challenger obligation against Kazakhstani contender Sergey Lipinets (12-0, 10 KOs).
For better and for worse, the IBF is the most rigid of the sanctioning bodies. Titlists within its organization must fight mandatory challengers when they are named. There are no step aside fees for optional defenses. Sometimes this works in the favor of boxing fans when an avoided fighter is named a mandatory challenger, and other times like this one it works against us.
Sergey Lipinets is a good fighter who is somewhere between a prospect and a contender. He is also a pretty entertaining fighter that will almost assuredly put together a very enjoyable fight with Indongo. His resume doesn’t feature any top contenders in this twelve fights, but his last five fights have definitely come against competent, quality pro fighters. Lipinets stopped four and won one decision.
Julius Indongo versus Sergey Lipinets is a fight in another context that I would be quite excited to see, but here we have a rare chance to unify all four titles in a division. Hopefully the winners of the Crawford/Diaz and Indongo/Lipinets fights have a chance to get together after this, but with four sanctioning body mouths to feeds I won’t be confident that it can happen until it does.
