Boxing News 2015: Guillermo Rigondeaux loses WBO junior featherweight title

Guillermo Rigondeaux has been stripped of his junior featherweight title by the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) due to inactivity for the past months. The boxing organisation’s mandate is for champions to defend their title within nine months since their last title defence.

The 35-year-old Rigondeaux, who is from Santiago de Cuba, Cuba, won the junior featherweight title on April 13, 2013 against Nonito Donaire of the Philippines. He has since defended it three times, against Joseph Agbeko of Ghana, Sod Kokietgym of Thailand and Hisashi Amagasa of Japan.

“[The] Committee shares Team Rigondeaux’s opinion that he is a fighter of utmost skill and pedigree, a gifted athlete that is not only perhaps the greatest amateur boxer ever, but also one of the top pound-for-pound professionals in the world,” the WBO said in an official release from their website.

“We also recognise that Mr. Rigondeaux’s talent, record of accomplishment and complicated style, invariably pose difficulties securing premium fights on the top-tier stage, but that it is the boxing promoter’s paramount responsibility— not ours or that of any sanctioning organisation for that matter— to secure, organise, and produce such fights.”

Rigondeaux is a two-time Olympic gold medalist; he turned pro in 2009. The southpaw is undefeated in 15 career bouts with 10 knockouts.

With the junior featherweight title vacated, the WBO is expected to set up a fight between Cesar Juarez of Mexico and Rigondeaux’s nemesis Donaire for a championship fight in the division. Juarez and Donaire are ranked no. 1 and no. 2 by the WBO in thei junior featherweight division.

Meanwhile, Rigondeaux can make an appeal to the WBO resolution and file it within 14 days after the notice.

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