With Jaime Munguia out of contention for the foreseeable future after last Saturday’s disastrous knockout loss to Bruno Surace, the IBF has ordered no. 3 super middleweight Christian Mbilli to face no. 6 Kevin Lele Sadjo in a final eliminator.
Eye of the Tiger Management’s Camille Estephan expressed interest in the fight on Twitter, while L’Equipe reports that Sadjo (24-0, 21 KO) promoter Yohan Zaoui accepted the order earlier this week.
That said, Mbilli (28-0, 23 KO) has other potential avenues. The WBC recently ordered him to battle Munguia in another eliminator, and while that’s obviously off the table, they could swap in no. 3 Diego Pacheco, who’d been in talks to face Mbilli in January before timing issues moved his focus to Steven Nelson. Mbilli is also no. 1 with the WBA.
The key difference here is the lack of a Canelo-shaped roadblock. Neither the WBC nor the WBA will ever, ever order a mandatory title shot again without Canelo’s approval; they already ran out the respective clocks on David Benavidez and David Morrell Jr until both men moved up to 175. You can confidently say that a win here would lead to a title fight with William Scull by the end of 2025.
Also, this is just a really, really fun matchup. Two cartoonishly muscled sluggers with bad intentions in every punch, both either from or currently living in France? Delectable.