Rigondeaux slams “coward” Carl Frampton
WBA super bantamweight champion and pound-for-pound star Guillermo Rigondeaux has arrived in Cardiff ahead of his title defence against Liverpool’s Jazza Dickens on Saturday, live on Boxnation.
Dickens is one of the few who has accepted a fight with the unbelievably-talented but financially-unappealing Cuban, and for that ‘El Chacal’ has expressed respect.
The 122lb division is currently in a state of flux, with former champions Carl Frampton, Kiko Martinez, and Leo Santa Cruz all having stepped up to featherweight – and Scott Quigg currently recovering slowly from a broken jaw in his clash with Belfast’s Frampton.
Two of these former super bantamweight champions, Frampton and Santa Cruz, meet at the end of the month in New York for Santa Cruz’s WBA 126lb title, and Rigondeaux is not best pleased with the situation.
Talking to IFL TV, the Caribbean stylist branded his former rivals as “cowards,” and described the fight at the Barclays Centre on July 30th as “ridiculous.”
Most of Rigodeaux’s ire was directed at Frampton, who relinquished the WBA super bantam title in favour of a Santa Cruz showdown. The Cuban maestro originally held the WBA crown, but was downgraded to ‘champion in recess’ due to his inactivity – thus paving the way for Frampton-Quigg to be a unification fight for the IBF and WBA straps.
Rigondeaux would have liked to face the Belfast man in a ‘Battle of the Jackals,’ but this option was shunned by Frampton and his team in favour of a Santa Cruz match-up, which Barry McGuigan described as being three or four times more financially rewarding.
Rigondeaux however remains unimpressed, and lamented that “he [Frampton] gave back the belt.”
“He doesn’t want to step in the ring [with me] and show who is the best 122lber in the World”
“But I don’t get caught up in that, but I wish they would have the courage to fight me, him [Frampton], Santa Cruz, all these guys.”
Watch Guillermon Rigondeaux’s interview with IFL TV in full below
