WBA featherweight champion Carl Frampton and his manager Barry McGuigan appear to be interested in facing the likes of IBF champion Lee Selby or WBC champion Gary Russell Jr. in a unification fight.
Whether they’ll be able to take either of those fights will be learned soon. Frampton may need to fight an immediate rematch with Leo Santa Cruz (32-1-1, 18 KOs), because he reportedly had a rematch clause in his contract with Frampton for their fight last Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Frampton beat Santa Cruz by a 12 round majority decision to win his WBA title. I saw the Santa Cruz vs. Frampton fight twice now, and I gave Santa Cruz the win both times. I thought he did more than enough to earn the decision. I don’t know what fight the judges were watching, but it wasn’t the same one I saw. I had the champion Santa Cruz holding onto his belt.
After the fight, Frampton’s camp said they didn’t think there was a rematch clause in the contract with Santa Cruz. However, there reportedly is a rematch clause according to the LA Times and RingTV.
Just how Frampton and his manager wouldn’t know about a rematch clause is unclear if that does turn out to be true. Did they not read the fine print in the contract? I think it would be good for boxing if Frampton does have to fight Santa Cruz next. With the way that Frampton faded in the second half of that fight and with the controversial scoring, I think fans want to see if Frampton can do it again with a different set of judges and a completely different venue. Having the fight staged in Los Angeles, California would be good.
Santa Cruz is going to use the rematch clause to force a rematch judging by his comments. He feels that he knows how to beat Frampton now by using pressure, and he’s going to force the older, smaller fighter to battle him hard for 12 rounds instead of just 6 like we saw last Saturday night.
“I just want the rematch,” Santa Cruz said. “Wherever he wants it. I want it in LA but if he wants it in Belfast, I could go to Belfast as well. I’m 100% ready.”
Frampton and his manager Barry McGuigan are over the moon right now because of the win over Santa Cruz, which easily could have been a win for him. But if they’re forced to fight Santa Cruz immediately rather than looking to milk the WBA title with a soft voluntary defense or an easy unification fight against the light hitting IBF champion Lee Selby, then it would have to be seen as a real buzz-kill for them.
Frampton’s celebration of his victory might turn to crocodile tears if he has to fight Santa Cruz again, but this time, he loses to him. Look at Frampton’s last two fights against Scott Quigg and Santa Cruz. In both fights, Frampton faded badly in the 2nd half of those contests and appeared to lose the last six rounds in both fights. The only reason you can argue that he won both of them was because Santa Cruz and Quigg didn’t put a lot of pressure on Frampton like they did in the 2nd half of those fights.
Santa Cruz only has himself to blame for him not putting pressure on Frampton, because he had the blueprint there for him to follow from the Frampton vs. Quigg fight. Instead of following that blueprint, Santa Cruz spent the first half of the fight with Frampton trying to box him. It was a dumb thing to do because he likely would have worn down Frampton and stopped him had he applied pressure for six rounds. As it is, Frampton looked beaten up at the end of the 12th. He tried to say that he made it hard on himself by choosing to slug in the 2nd half of the fight, but the truth is, Santa Cruz cut off the ring on the 5’5” Frampton and forced him to fight. If he didn’t do that, then Frampton would have run all over the ring for 12 rounds like he did in his two fights against Kiko Martinez.
