Another IBF-ordered title fight will forgo a negotiation period.
The Ring has confirmed that the Anthony Cacace-Eduardo Núnez IBF 130-pound title fight will head to a June 11 purse bid hearing. A ruling was made upon request from Núnez’s team, per their right in compliance with ordered mandatory title fights.
“On May 23, 2024, the IBF ordered Anthony Cacace and Eduardo Núnez to begin negotiations,” IBF president Daryl Peoples informed all registered promoters in a letter obtained by The Ring. “On May 28, 2024 Juan Carlos Torres [of BXSTRS Promotions] representing Eduardo Núnez as c0-promoter along with Matchroom Boxing requested an immediate purse bid because an agreement could not be reached.”
Fight Freak Unite’s Dan Rafael was the first to report the development.
A 30-day negotiation period was previously assigned to the ordered title fight. That call came five days after Cacace dethroned Joe Cordina via eighth-round knockout on May 18 in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia.
Cacace (22-1, 8 knockouts), The Ring’s No. 5-rated junior lightweight, delivered a career-best performance on his biggest stage to date. The bout took place on the Oleksandr Usyk-Tyson Fury undercard. Cordina (17-1, 9 KOs) entered the fight on the hook to honor the mandatory defense with a win. That obligation has now transferred to Cacace, who has won seven in a row.
Núnez (27-1, 27 KOs) stormed into the number-one slot with an eleventh-round knockout of former titlist Shavkatdzhon Rakhimov. Their Feburary 16 title eliminator saw Núnez hit the road to wear down and stop Rakhimov (17-2-1, 14 KOs) in Dushanbe, Tajikistan.
The fight marked the first time that Núnez was extended beyond the tenth round. He didn’t need much longer than that, however, to close the show. The win extended his current seventeen-fight win and knockout streak.
Cacace and Núnez are obligated to remain committed to the fight, per IBF rules on mandatory title defenses.
Failure by any IBF titlist to honor a mandatory defense will result in their being stripped of the title. Similarly, challengers who abandon the process will be ineligible to participate in any IBF-sanctioned bout for at least six months. Furthermore, such failure by a challenger will also result in a demotion outside the IBF’s top ten.
News of the purse bid comes less than 24 hours after the Canelo Alvarez-William Scull 168-pound championship was dealt the same fate. As previously reported by The Ring, the hearing for that fight is scheduled for June 6, per request by Scull’s team to end the negotiation period.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for The Ring and vice president of the Boxing Writers Association of America.