Featherweight
Leigh Wood-Mauricio Lara winner vs Luis Alberto Lopez-Michael Conlan winner.
Since each of these four fighters can make action battles, Wood-Conlan was my fight of the year for 2022, and these two fights are signed to take place, I'll take the winners and match them in an excellent unification matchup with the winner of Wood-Lara owning the WBA title and the Lopez-Conlan victor controlling the IBF version.
Mix and match as you please because no matter the matchup, you'll have an entertaining fight and a two-title champion.
Junior Featherweight
Stephen Fulton vs Naoya Inoue
This fight is reportedly agreed to and give Fulton, the WBC and WBO champion full credit for crossing promotional lines (Fulton fights for PBC and Inoue is associated with Top Rank) and traveling to Japan to face the feared Inoue, who gave up all four of his bantamweight championships to move to the 122-pound division.
The question is when will the continual rise in weight affect the punching power of Inoue and would it happen against Fulton, arguably the best in the division?
It's a great matchup and one that would be even better if the winner signed to face WBA and IBF champion MJ Akhmadaliev, who also could argue that he is the top boxer in the division.
Bantamweight
Nonito Donaire vs Emmanuel Rodriguez
Only the WBC and IBF have announced the fighters that will be involved in their vacancies for the four titles that Naoya Inoue left behind to move to junior featherweight and each of the two has one of the fighters that I'd like to see.
Former multi-division champion Nonito Donaire and former IBF champion Emmanuel Rodriguez have each been knocked out by Inoue yet still are arguably the best fighters remaining in a division cleaned out by the Monster.
Donaire will fight Jason Moloney for the WBC title while Rodriguez will tackle Vincent Astrolabo for the IBF strap and while both of their opponents aren't pushovers, fighting each other would temporarily decide the best in the division.
Junior Bantamweight
Juan Francisco Estrada vs Junto Nakatani
While anyone would be all in on an Estrada-Roman Gonzalez IV, I'm trying to make a fight for the next generation of stars and the fight I would have selected would have been Nakatani, who vacated his WBO flyweight title to move up, against another young star in WBC champion Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez.
However, Rodriguez vacated his title to drop to flyweight, where he has spent most of his career, and fight for the title that Nakatani vacated, stopping a Rodriguez-Nakatani fight for now.
Estrada is unlikely to face a younger star such as Nakatani as Estrada nears the end of his career, and Nakatani is mandated for a WBO shot against his countryman Kazuto Ioka but if the desire was there, both men have connections with Eddie Hearn and Matchroom Promotions.
Flyweight
Jesse "Bam" Rodriguez vs Julio Cesar Martinez
This fight seems very likely to be eventually signed with Rodriguez dropping down from 115 pounds, Martinez still holding the WBC title, and both men affiliated with Eddie Hearn, this could be an easy fight to make.
Rodriguez is moving back to his natural weight class after an excellent 2022 that saw him win a title over Carlos Cuadras and defend against former champion Srisiket Sor Rungvisai and Israel Gonzalez.
Martinez has lost a bit of the shine from his star of late with a lopsided loss to Roman Gonzalez, various delays and postponements, a no-contest vs mandatory challenger McWilliams Arroyo, and a dull effort in a majority decision win, that many thought he lost, against late replacement Samuel Carmona.
Martinez could look at a Rodriguez fight as a chance to re-ignite a struggling career, despite still holding a title.
Style-wise, this could be a very strong mesh of styles that could have fight-of-the-year possibilities with Rodriguez seeming to have an edge in class.
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