Ben Davison has added fuel to the potential unification fire.
The man who trains WBA ‘regular’ featherweight champion Leigh Wood sat down with new Boxing Social team member Ali Drew on Thursday.
Davison recently saw his charge ordered to meet Leo Santa Cruz, the Mexican Super champion with the WBA, in a bid to get rid of one of the belts and have one sanctioning body king at the weight.
Santa Cruz had requested a permit to unify his WBA Super world title at featherweight against WBC champion Rey Vargas. However, the WBA ordered the California-based fighter to meet the Brit next or risk being stripped.
‘El Terremoto’ then confirmed that he would move ahead with the fight and take on ‘Leigh-thal’, from Nottingham, next. That was before the WBA revealed that the purse splits for the contest would be 75 per cent to 25 per cent in favour of Santa Cruz.
Davison siad:
“We’ve got some options, Eddie’s [Hearn] having a look at those options, but no decisions have been made yet as to what will be Leigh Wood’s next step.”
Davison and his promoter, the aforementioned Hearn, don’t believe Wood (26-2, 16 KOs) will get his true value in the fight, thanks to the purse split ruling.
And a fight that has been mooted to replace the one with Santa Cruz is a unification showdown between Wood and Josh Warrington, the IBF champion, from Leeds.
Davison continued:
“That’s definitely one of the options.
“It’s a huge fight and Josh Warrington is a fantastic champion with a big name. Both fighters have massive fan bases behind them and big momentum with Leigh Wood and Nottingham Forest, who have just been promoted to the Premier League.
“Everything’s booming in Nottingham at the moment, especially going back to the Leigh Wood fight against Michael Conlan, there was a lot of momentum built there, and those two sets of fans coming together, I think that’s a ginormous fight with belts, without belts, it doesn’t even matter. But depending on the situation that happens with this WBA ‘regular’ and WBA Super, it just gets made even bigger if that can be a unification clash.”
Warrington, who suffered a fractured jaw and broken hand last time out, will be eyeing a return to the ring before the end of the year after regaining his world championship with a seventh-round stoppage of former adversary Kiko Martinez – who himself is back later this year – in a rematch at the First Direct Arena in March.
The trainer concluded:
“We’re weighing up our options at the moment, but [if that fight happens], the fans will get their monies’ worth.
“Warrington’s in great fights, Leigh is in great fights, I think it’s a great match-up, it’ll be a huge build-up and an exciting fight as well, in my opinion, so it’s definitely one that myself, Leigh, Josh, his team and the boxing world are looking forward to and hoping that can happen.”