After months of delay, IBF featherweight champion Josh Warrington’s planned unification with WBA titlist Xu Can may finally see the light of day early next year. Mike Coppinger reports that the pair “are finalising a deal for a featherweight title fight in early February in the UK.” Coppinger says to expect an official announcement “in the coming days.”
All signs pointed to this fight going down this past summer, but COVID put a rather thorough kibosh on that.
Xu (18-2, 3 KO) technically only holds the WBA “world” title, but as Coppinger points out, “super” champion Leo Santa Cruz is gallivanting about at 130 pounds. There’s no reason not to consider the 26-year-old the true WBA featherweight champion, whether or not the cretins at the WBA elect to properly acknowledge that.
Semantics aside, there are few fights on the schedule with a similar potential for utter mayhem. Both Xu and Warrington (30-0, 7 KO) are wildly prolific volume punchers, meaning the Compubox guys are going to have a profoundly rough night.