The WBA has scheduled a purse bid between its light flyweight super champion, Hiroto Kyoguchi, and its light flyweight regular champion, Esteban Bermudez. The bidding will take place on Friday, January 28 at 3:00 p.m., US Eastern Time, through the Zoom platform. Kyoguchi must fight Bermudez as part of the title reduction strategy that the WBA implemented several months ago. The bidding will be conducted by the WBA Championships Committee director Carlos Chavez and will have a split of 75% for Kyoguchi and 25% for Bermudez. The WBA, which originally called for this purse bid in November, sent the official communication to the representatives of both boxers, who are aware of the auction, in addition to other promoters who might be interested in the fight.
January 3rd story: The WBA sent a new communication to the teams of Hiroto Kyoguchi (WBA 108-pound super champion) of Japan and Esteban Bermudez (WBA 108-pound regular champion) of Mexico granting them until January 7th to submit signed bout contracts to fight each other. The communication was sent on December 29, 2021 and the bout must take place before February 9th. The terams of Kyoguchi and Bermudez previously advised the WBA that they had reached an agreement for to fight each other and consolidate the WBA's light flyweight title.
WBA Timeline: The WBA ordered the fight last June 10, 2021 and gave a period of one month until July 11, 2021 for them to reach an agreement. Subsequently, on August 18th, the committee sent a reminder and gave 10 days to negotiate until the 28th of the same month... On October 20th, another notice was sent out giving them 15 days to send the fight contracts before considering a bidding process. On November 5th, this period ended and the bidding was called for November 12th... On November 11th, one day before the purse bid, both teams (Matchroom and Greg Cohen) informed that they had reached an agreement for the fight and the bid was called off, and they had until November 22th to send the contracts... On December 14th, they still had not submitted the contracts and as a courtesy they were given until December 20th... However, last December 29th there was no news, so the new January 7, 2022 deadline was sent.
Failure to submit the contracts will entitle the WBA to apply rule D15, which states that if the champion does not sign a fight contract within the required period of twenty (20) days after the awarding of the bid or refuses to participate in the fight by the winning promoter, he will be considered in violation of these rules and his title may be vacated.
In addition to Rule D-16, which explains that if a qualified bid is not received in response to the first auction request or if the winning promoter or a boxer identified in the auction award fails to comply with these rules, the Committee may request a second auction. In the case of a title defense, if a qualified bid is not received in response to a second auction, the Chairman may vacate the title and the position of mandatory challenger.
