The IBF has been very busy in the past few weeks resolving multiple title issues and purse bids for those titles.
One purse bid for a title fight that has been finally resolved is the light flyweight title bout between unified WBA and IBF champion Hekkie Budler and mandatory challenger Felix Alvarado. Promoter Sampson Lewkowicz won the purse bid on July 5 as the only party to submit a bid for the fight.
Lewkowicz submitted a winning bid of $25,000 with 75 percent of the bid going to Budler as the champion and the other 25 percent going to Alvarado. This means Budler will receive $18,750 of the winning bid with Alvarado getting the remaining $6,250. Per IBF rules, the fight needs to take place within 90 days of the purse bid?s conclusion, which would be October 5. Fight contracts also need to be submitted to the IBF within 15 days of the end of the purse bid, which in this case would be July 20.
According to ESPN, Lewkowicz is hoping to put the fight sometime in September, likely as chief support for WBC super middleweight champion David Benavidez?s next title defense. Benavidez was previously ordered to fight mandatory challenger Anthony Dirrell, but no date and venue has been announced for the fight.
Budler became the unified champion after defeating Ryoichi Taguchi back in May. Budler was owed a shot at the IBF title after the governing body ordered former champion Milan Melindo to fight Budler in a rematch of their September 2017 bout which saw Melindo win. Instead of fighting Budler, Melindo fought Taguchi, then the WBA champion, in a unification bout on the annual New Year?s Eve boxing card in Japan. After Taguchi beat Melindo and unified the titles, Budler got his shot where he defeated the unified champion by a very narrow unanimous decision.
Alvarado, a former WBC Latino light flyweight champion, has already fought three times in 2018, winning all three fights in three rounds or less.