{"id":643219,"date":"2026-06-17T08:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/643219\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T08:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T08:58:19","slug":"bam-vacates-ring-115-pound-title-ranked-no-3-at-bantamweight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/643219\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Bam’ vacates Ring 115-pound title, ranked No. 3 at bantamweight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Plenty has been said about a potential Naoya Inoue mega fight in Japan<\/a> up at junior featherweight, though that chatter can wait for another day.Two years to the month he won the Ring title with a seventh-round knockout of long-reigning champion Juan Francisco Estrada<\/a>, the 26-year-old is chasing greatness up another weight class.He added WBA 118-pound honors to an ever-increasing list of silverware with a violent sixth-round stoppage<\/a> of Antonio Vargas<\/a> in Arizona on Saturday, days after his bantamweight move was made official.<\/p>\n

The sanctioning body trio with which he held world titles have since responded, and The Ring’s No. 4-rated pound-for-pound fighter headlines a smaller update this week. <\/p>\n

Ring-rated cruiserweight contender Leonardo Mosquea<\/a> (19-0, 12 KOs) kickstarted his 2026 with a first-round knockout against Mexico’s Francisco Rivas Ruiz last Tuesday while Abraham Perez<\/a> (15-0, 7 KOs) pitched a career-best split decision win over Jonathan Gonzalez<\/a> to win a secondary flyweight title Sunday night.<\/p>\n

Nonetheless, just two divisions have alterations, so scroll down to see them.<\/p>\n

*Bold\/italics denotes movement in the division.<\/p>\n

Bantamweight<\/p>\n

Rodriguez vaults to No. 3 at 118 pounds after toppling now-former champion Vargas, who drops three places to No. 8. WBO champion Medina and former WBC flyweight beltholder Higa drop a place each for the division’s new entrant while Jason Moloney drops out as a consequence of the bottom three all moving down a space.<\/p>\n

C (vacant)<\/p>\n

1 SEIYA TSUTSUMI Japan 13-0-3 (8 KOs)<\/p>\n

2 TAKUMA INOUE WBC Japan 22-2-0 (5 KOs)<\/p>\n

3 JESSE RODRIGUEZ U.S. 24-0-0 (17 KOs)<\/p>\n

4 CHRISTIAN MEDINA WBO Mexico 27-4-0 (19 KOs)<\/p>\n

5 DAIGO HIGA Japan 21-3-3 (19 KOs)<\/p>\n

6 RIKU MASUDA Japan 10-1-0 (9 KOs)<\/p>\n

7 JOSE SALAS IBF Mexico 17-0-0 (11 KOs)<\/p>\n

8 ANTONIO VARGAS U.S. 19-2-1 (11 KOs)<\/p>\n

9 TENSHIN NASUKAWA Japan 8-1-0 (3 KOs)<\/p>\n

10 MICHAEL ANGELETTI U.S. 15-0-0 (8 KOs)<\/p>\n

Junior bantamweight<\/p>\n

Only change here is a straightforward one, Rodriguez relinquishing his belt to pursue bantamweight leaving the weight class wide open again.<\/p>\n

The WBA have already upgraded interim champion David Jimenez to full titleholder<\/a>, while the WBC and WBO are expected to order bouts between their top-rated contenders for vacant championships in the coming days.<\/p>\n

C (vacant)<\/p>\n

1 FERNANDO MARTINEZ Argentina 18-1-0 (9 KOs)<\/p>\n

2 DAVID JIMENEZ WBA Costa Rica 18-1-0 (12 KOs)<\/p>\n

3 PHUMELELA CAFU South Africa 11-1-3 (8 KOs)<\/p>\n

4 ANDREW MOLONEY IBF Australia 29-4-0 (18 KOs)<\/p>\n

5 TOMOYA TSUBOI Japan 3-0-0 (2 KOs)<\/p>\n

6 RICARDO MALAJIKA South Africa 17-2-0 (12 KOs)<\/p>\n

7 ISRAEL GONZALEZ Mexico 32-5-2 (12 KOs)<\/p>\n

8 WILLIBALDO GARCIA Mexico 23-7-2 (13 KOs)<\/p>\n

9 THEOPHILOUS ALLOTEY Ghana 14-0-0 (11 KOs)<\/p>\n

10 SIKHO NQOTHOLE South Africa 22-3-0 (13 KOs)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plenty has been said about a potential Naoya Inoue mega fight in Japan up at junior featherweight, though…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643220,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[59273,154913,2560,151516,6102,213477,101,6826,56,54,55,4862],"class_list":["post-643219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-object-object","tag-bantamweight","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-articles","tag-boxing-news","tag-junior-bantamweight","tag-sports","tag-the-ring","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-update"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643219\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}