The World Boxing Council has ordered negotiations to take place between WBA lightweight champion Jorge Linares (41-3, 27 KOs) and World Boxing Council World lightweight champion Dejan Zlaticanin (22-0, 15 KOs). However, Linares suffered a hand injury in his recent 12 round unanimous decision win over champion Anthony Crolla on September 24.
With Linares unable to fight, the WBC is going to allow the 32-year-old Zlaticanin make a voluntary defense of his WBC 135lb belt while Linares recovers from his hand injury. Linares, 31, is expected to be on the shelf for a while with the injury.
This will enable Zlaticanin to stay sharp and get in a title defense while he waits for Linares to slowly recover. The injury for Linares is expected to keep him out of action for seven weeks before he can resume his training. Linares didn’t suffer a fracture, thankfully. Never the less, Linares’ injured right hand is going to need a lot of time to heal before he can get back into action.
It was an impressive performance by Linares in defeating the 29-year-old Crolla in front of his own British fans at the Manchester Arena last month in Manchester, England. Linares overcame a rough start in the first five rounds, and was able to hurt Crolla at the midpoint of the fight, and then cruise to victory using his boxing skills and good movement. Still, Linares had to win the championship rounds to squeeze out a narrow 12 round decision by the scores 115-114, 115-113 and 117-111.
The more accurate score of those three was the 117-111 in this writer’s opinion. It’s not all that surprising that we saw close scores because the fight was in Crolla’s hometown. Linares should feel grateful that he got the win at all, because he was in the lion’s den big time in that fight.
Linares gets a crack at Zlaticanin due to him previously being the WBC lightweight champion, but he suffered an injury that kept him out of the ring for close to a year. In the meantime, the WBC stripped Linares of his WBC title and gave him the old ‘Champion in Recess’ tag, which meant that Linares could fight for his old WBC title as soon as he healed.
Unfortunately for Linares, he was only able to fight once against Crolla before suffering another hand injury, so he’s going to be healing up for a while before he gets a shot at Zlaticanin and his old WBC lightweight strap.
Zlaticanin defeated Franklin Mamani by a 3rd round knockout last June to capture the vacant WBC lightweight title. It was mismatch basically. It was kind of sad though that Zlaticanin was allowed to fight an over-matched guy like Mamani, because there were a lot of talents in the WBC’s rankings like Mikey Garcia, Denis Shafikov, Ray Beltran, Petr Petrov, and Felix Verdejo. You would think that the WBC would have Zlaticanin fight someone good for the vacant WBC lightweight title rather than an overmatched fighter with an inflated ranking like Manani.
Linares and Zlaticanin were supposed to fight each other earlier this year in April, but Linares was still injured, so the WBC had Zlaticanin fight Mamani last June. Believe me, it wasn’t a good fight at all to watch unless you like watching a mismatch type slaughter. I don’t like watching mismatches, especially when it’s a mismatch on paper like the Zlaticanin-Mamani fight was.
“Linares injured his right hand in the sixth round of the ferocious battle versus Anthony Crolla, and after analyzing the situation and confirming with Dr. Jedediah Jones, it has been concluded that Linares will not be able to fight for some time,” WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman said in a press release on Thursday. “The WBC is hereby confirming that Dejan Zlaticanin is free to make a voluntary title defense of his WBC lightweight title.”
Zlaticanin defeated Ricky Burns by a 12 round split decision two years ago in Glasgow, Scotland. Zlaticanin dropped Burns in the 4th round, and dominated him the entire fight. I had Zlaticanin winning all 12 rounds. I wasn’t surprised when the fight was scored a split decision. It was sad. Zlaticanin should be thankful he got the decision at all.
Judge John Keane scored the fight 115-113 in favor of Burns. All I can say is, ‘Wow, what a horrible score!’ Since that fight, Zlaticanin has defeated Alex one, Ivan Redkach and Mamani.
Linares could be facing Crolla in a rematch soon, as he had a rematch clause in the contract for their fight on September 24. Crolla and his promoter Eddie Hearn want the rematch with Linares, and yeah, they want it to take place in Manchester again.
I don’t see what the point of a second fight between Crolla and Linares is. I think we saw who the more T-A-L-E-N-T-E-D fighter was of the two last time with Linares schooling Crolla for 12 rounds. They could fight each other a 100 times and Linares will always win because he’s just too good for Crolla. There’s nothing that Crolla can do to even the fight out because he doesn’t have the talent to beat him.
