Luis Nery vs Brandon Figueroa in the works for early 2021

A potentially bonkers super bantamweight slugfest could hit our screens early next year. Mike Coppinger reports that WBC champion Luis Nery and WBA “world” champion Brandon Figueroa “have agreed to a deal” to meet in “Q1 of 2021.”

Nery (31-0, 24 KO), a former WBC bantamweight champion who lost his belt on the scales against Shinsuke Yamanaka and later lost his mandatory status in similar fashion, got a crack at the super bantamweight belt when Rey Vargas suffered a broken leg. He turned aside a surprisingly strong effort from Aaron Alameda in their September vacant title fight, which was originally planned for March before COVID intervened.

Figueroa (21-0-1, 16 KO) was gifted an interim belt for beating Yonfrez Parejo last year, but proved his championship mettle in his second defense, battling an overweight Julio Ceja to a grueling draw. Like Nery, he’s fought once in 2020, beating down Damien Vazquez on that same September card.

This is only sort of a unification, as Figueroa holds the secondary version of Murodjon Akhmadaliev’s “super” title. Still, Nery’s poor performance against Alameda and Figueroa’s skill in firefights make this an extremely interesting matchup.