Santa Cruz steps up to 122lb, McDonnell & Ceja to fight for vacant belt.

By Jack Price @PriceyJ97.

Leo Santa Cruz.

Young boxing superstar Leo Santa Cruz (23-0, 13 KO's) has made the decision to vacate his IBF bantamweight title and step up to the highly-competitive super-bantamweight division. This move has been coming for a relatively long time and Cruz and his team finally made it official on Monday, a day before the negotiations were set to start for his mandatory title defense against Jamie McDonnell.

The 24-year old was one of the breakthrough stars of 2012, fighting on five occasions and looking impressive every time. He is now in search for the "big" fights at 122lb. The California-resident has long been linked with a mouth-watering bout with Abner Mares, another young fighter who made it into the big time in 2012. However, Mares looks set to step up to featherweight in search for a fight with WBC champ Daniel Ponce De Leon so that fight looks unlikely at this current time. But there's still plenty of exciting match-ups for Cruz at super-bantamweight, and his promoters at Golden Boy agree.

"For the first fight at the higher weight class we want to pick a quality opponent and we see that in the next two or so fights Leo will be fighting for a world title again," said Golden Boy Chief Executive Richard Schaefer. "We will have to see what is available for him for a big fight, but we believe as a company, that in no particular order, Leo Santa Cruz, (Nonito) Donaire, Abner Mares, (Guillermo) Rigondeaux and Gary Russell Jr. are the best guys in these weight classes (super-bantamweight and featherweight), and we are not afraid to put Leo in with anyone."

Khan-Garcia winner will have to vacate one title...

The light-welterweight unification bout between Amir Khan and Danny Garcia on Saturday night (July 14th) is a multi-title fight, with the WBA and WBC world titles on the line. Until just recently, the winner of the fight would have become a unified world champion and probably stayed like that for quite a long time. This could still be the case, but it is very unlikely.

World Boxing Council President Jose Sulaiman has claimed that the winner of the fight will have to vacate one of the titles. The reason for this is that the WBC do not usually allow their champions to remain unified with other sanctioning bodies.

"It's a real surprise to know that the WBA title is involved," said Sulaiman. "The WBC will accept only the WBC. Whoever doesn't want it, the title is vacant."

When the fight was made last month, only Garcia's WBC title was expected to be on the line, but recently Khan was reinstated as the WBA champ. Lamont Peterson, who defeated Khan last December, was stripped of his title after failing a drug test. The WBA were expected to make the title vacant but instead they handed it back to Khan.

It is very likely that the winner of the fight will vacate the WBC title. If Garcia wins, he will want to hold on to the first world title he ever won, and if Khan wins, he will also likely want to keep the WBC title as it is probably the most recognised sanctioning body around today.