The World Boxing Association (WBA) Championships Committee, in another decision following the world title reduction plan, ordered the bout between WBA cruiserweight champion Arsen Goulamirian and his mandatory challenger Aleksei Egorov. Egorov is ranked number two and was chosen after Ryad Merhy, who was originally scheduled to face Goulamirian to decide the sole champion of the category, decided not to fulfill the bout.
Now, the champion must face his mandatory challenger, having gone two years and eight months without doing so and having been granted two optional defenses during that time.
Egorov earned the right to challenge the world champion due to the fact that he was the 200-pound Gold champion and that status put him as the mandatory challenger.
Rule C.13- Fight Limitations, states that the champion must not fight a boxer who is not the official challenger within 60 days after the expiration of the mandatory defense period.
The period of negotiations will be of 15 days and began this August 23 when the communication was sent to the parties and it will expire on September 7.
If in that period the parties do not reach an agreement or any of them refuses to accept the fight, the committee may send it to purse bid.
The last time he fought was December 2019. He should no longer be champion. When they decided to get rid of all of those champions, they should have just stripped Goulamirian and had Merhy.
Why should they, in this case? Merhy already lost to him and clearly didn’t want to fight him again. I don’t see how a guy like that is worthy of being called champion.
I agree with your last point, but they gave him a belt, so it doesn’t matter what we think. The same thing happened at heavyweight, Daniel Dubois gets knocked out and his very next fight is for a WBA title. He isn’t deserving of a title fight imo, but clearly they disagree.
In this particular case though, for me at least, it’s the same scenario as what happened at featherweight. You had a long standing champion who had, basically, given up on the title and you had another who was active. Right before he vacated, Merhy was pursuing a fight with Makabu. It’s the WBA’s way though – the guy who was champ before Goulamirian, Shumenov, went years without fighting and ended up having one fight in four and half years before they stripped him.