WBO mandatory challenger Xander Zayas’ attempt at facing off with WBC and WBO junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora was refused by the champ on Saturday night when he confronted him in his dressing room after his fourth-round technical knockout win over Chordale Booker (23-2, 11 KOs) at the Michelob Ultra Arena in Las Vegas.
Xander was allowed into the ring after the fight tonight, and he posed with ‘The Towering Inferno’ Fundora moments after his win. The Top Rank-promoted Zayas was jumping the gun, trying to begin early promotion for a fight between them without Fundora’s side saying they’ll face him next.
It was an aggressive move by Xander, 22, and it backfired on him because Fundora and his promoter, Sampson Lewkowicz, didn’t say they’d take the fight with him next. They want the best-paying match, and Zayas is not a big-money fight. He’s only known by hardcore boxing fans and his fellow Puerto Ricans on the island.
The WBO is already pushing Fundora to defend against Xander next. They already said this week that the winner of the Fundora-Booker fight would have 120 days to defend against the mandatory Zayas.
If Fundora chooses not to, he would likely be stripped unless he fights one of the other champions in a unification. The options are slim in that regard. WBA champion Terence Crawford won’t be free to fight him, and it’s possible he won’t return to the division. IBF champion Bakhram Murtazaliev isn’t popular, and he would be a risky fight for Fundora.
Mandatory Drama
“They didn’t want to do a face-off,” said Xander Zayas to the media, talking about his attempts at getting WBC and WBO junior middleweight champion Sebastian Fundora to face off with him in his dressing room after his win over Chordale Booker on Saturday night in Las Vegas. “That’s part of it. We’ll get it going.
“Everybody knows why I’m here. I’m mandatory for a reason, and I’m here to see the champion and obviously get the conversations going to get the fight happening,” said Zayas.
Xander earned his WBO 154-lb mandatory spot, knocking out little-known fighter Slawa Spomer in the ninth round last month on February 14th. That’s what you call being put in an ideal situation to earn the WBO mandatory spot the easy way.
For the World Boxing Organization to have sanctioned the Zayas-Spomer fight as a title eliminator, they might as well have given Xander the mandatory spot without him fighting. The Germany-based Spomer had never fought a world-ranked contender before being put in the title eliminator.
The WBO should have insisted that Zayas fight #2 Charles Conwell for the title eliminator, not Spomer. However, it’s doubtful Top Rank would agree to that fight because the chances of Zayas losing would be too high.
