Leo Santa Cruz To Defend WBA Featherweight Title Against Miguel Flores
Leo Santa Cruz will be making another featherweight world title defense in California on FOX.
Santa Cruz, the WBA “super” featherweight champion, will defend his title against Miguel Flores on February 16, 2019. The fight will headline a PBC on FOX card at a venue to be determined later in Los Angeles.
This will be Santa Cruz’s third title defense since regaining the WBA title when he defeated Carl Frampton in a rematch back in January 2017. Santa Cruz followed that win with a victory over Chris Avalos on a PBC card that aired on FOX and then defeated Abner Mares in the main event of a Showtime card in Los Angeles this past June.
After winning his first 22 pro fights, Flores would go on to lose his next two fights back in 2017. After losses to Dat Nguyen and Avalos, Flores bounced back this past April with a second-round TKO victory over Raul Chirino. Flores is currently ranked No. 15 in the official WBA featherweight rankings.
Another fight that was announced for the February 16 card was a welterweight title fight between Omar Figueroa Jr. and John Molina Jr. Figueroa was supposed to fight Adrien Broner back in April, but the fight was not made as Figueroa suffered an injury, which prevented the fight from happening. This will be Molina’s welterweight debut as his previously announced bout against Victor Ortiz for September was called off due to Ortiz’s legal issues that surfaced in the week of the fight.
