Miguel Berchelt To Defend WBC Super Featherweight Title In June
Miguel Roman will have to wait a little while longer before challenging for Miguel Berchelt’s WBC super featherweight title after Berchelt opted for yet another voluntary title defense.
Berchelt will now defend his 130-pound world title against Jonathan Victor Barros in Barros’ return to the super featherweight division. The fight will take place on June 23 in Mexico on a venue to be determined at a later date.
Barros, a former WBA featherweight world champion from 2010-2011, is coming off a wide unanimous decision loss to then-IBF featherweight champion Lee Selby in 2017. The 34-year-old Barros already owns a win over Roman and has fought the likes of Mikey Garcia, Yuriorkis Gamboa and Juan Carlos Salgado.
Berchelt, who previously held the interim WBO title in 2016, has held the WBC title since the start of 2017 when he knocked out Francisco Vargas. After defeating Takashi Miura in his first title defense last year, Berchelt looked like he would fight Roman next as Roman is Berchelt’s mandatory challenger. Instead of fighting Roman, Berchelt fought Maxwell Awuku as a voluntary title defense back in February with Berchelt quickly knocking out Awuku in the third round.
Provided Berchelt defeats Barros, the champion will then be ordered to fight Roman to fulfill his mandatory title fight. Roman has been the mandatory challenger since defeating Orlando Salido on HBO late last year. Despite Berchelt having a mandatory challenger, the WBC did recently announce that the champion would be allowed to make another voluntary defense before fighting Roman.
