The WBA Championships Committee has made the decision to withdraw the recognition of Juan Francisco “Gallo” Estrada as super flyweight champion of the organization. With the decision, Joshua Franco remains as the only WBA 115-pound champion.
The decision was made based on the WBA internal rules and taking into account all the events that have taken place in recent months.
Estrada won the title on March 13, 2021 with a victory over Roman Gonzalez. On February 9 of this year, the committee ordered him to fight Joshua Franco, mandatory challenger. Subsequently, on April 4, the fight was sent to purse bid.
On April 19, the bidding took place with the sole participation of Golden Boy Promotions, Franco’s representatives, who won the rights to promote the fight. On May 16, the signed contracts were sent for the fight to take place on July 16.
Subsequently, on July 22, the committee sent a document to Estrada requesting information about his future plans in boxing, since one year and four months had passed without a title defense.
Taking into account that all fighters and their representatives must know the WBA rules and that rule D-14 states that a fight that went to auction must take place between 45 and 90 days after the date on which the fight took place, the committee made the decision regarding Estrada.
That’s too bad, I thought Franco would give Estrada a really good fight. The last I heard Estrada was going to be taking a tune up-ish kind of fight in Mexico and I’d also heard that the WBC would strip him if he went through with the Franco fight instead of fighting Chocolatito. I guess he chose the WBC. Franco’s not going to fight his brother, obviously, but he’s now suddenly free if someone…. from Japan…. wanted to unify later this year.
I seem to remember us discussing a very low purse bid for this one…like 120k or in that area. The small end of that could be like 36k which of course gets a lot smaller when you pay taxes and everyone else. Still like you…I would have been interested to see how those two match up. Not sure what a fighter like Franco gets fight to fight. I would always be interested to know that type of stuff.
I remember that as well Pete. It was because Golden Boy was the only bidder for that fight and they just bid the minimum – whatever it was. But I recall reading something that Estrada had agreed (after seemingly getting a raise in purse) to the fight and the date was even August 20 at one point.
Franco also just recently left GB, so maybe that also had something to do with it, at least on his end.
Maybe this kid will go on to fight for a belt that means something now.
Bad news, Estrada vs Franco won’t happen . Good news, only one guy is a champion in the WBA 115 division, and maybe we might have Estrada vs Gonzalez instead. Franco can fight Ioka or the winner of Ancajas vs Martinez