Dedicated readers of my work, or “Stumbos” as I like to call them, may recall the inordinate amount of time I dedicated to chronicling the saga of Leo Santa Cruz vs Leigh Wood. My struggles appeared to be nearing an end when when the pair came to terms for their title consolidation, only for them to about-face and pursue interim fights against Rey Vargas and Mauricio Lara, respectively. Now, we’re right back to where we started, as Salvador Rodriguez reports that the WBA will re-order the fight after both the aforementioned interim bouts collapsed.
Wood’s (26-2, 16 KO) fight with Lara fell through earlier this month when Wood suffered a biceps injury. No word as to why Santa Cruz’s (38-2-1, 19 KO) unification didn’t go through; both are PBC fighters, so it shouldn’t have been difficult to put it together, but the fact that we didn’t get a single update after the initial report suggests that negotiations never got anywhere.
While I’m not terribly pleased that we won’t get to see the absolute car crash that Wood vs Lara would have been, I can’t be too angry at this turn of events. Letting Santa Cruz squat on the belt for years and then ditch a mandatory challenger for a unification was a BS move from the start. Have these two fight and Vargas deal with a WBC mandatory while they do so and we’ll go from there.