Dsalita Back in January, Top Rank announced their May 11th Vasiliy Lomachenko vs George Kambosos Jr show as a “title tripleheader.” Nina Hughes vs Cherneka Johnson reportedly occupies one of the slots, though that has still yet to be finalized, and it appeared likely that one of the Moloney brothers would fill the other.
Jason was the presumptive choice, as he currently holds the WBO bantamweight title, but news broke last week that he’d instead meet undefeated Yoshiki Takei a week prior on the Naoya Inoue vs Luis Nery undercard.
Now, however, Dan Rafael reveals that Andrew will challenge Carlos Cuadras for the interim WBC super flyweight belt in Perth. That feels like a cop-out to me, as it’s a secondary belt, but technically accurate is still accurate.
Cuadras (42-5-1, 28 KO), now two years removed from an upset loss to “Bam” Rodriguez, scored a pair of early knockdowns on Pedro Guevara and turned aside a late surge to claim the title in November. That victory was supposed to set up a third fight with full champ Juan Francisco Estrada, but with “El Gallo” circling a June date with Rodriguez, it makes sense to stay busy.
Moloney (26-3, 16 KO) sits at 1-3 (1 NC) in title fights, beating Elton Dharry for the interim WBA belt in 2019, coming up empty-handed in three WBA “world” bouts with Joshua Franco, and suffering 2023’s Knockout of the Year in a bid for Junto Nakatani’s WBO title last May. He’s still a solid operator and will have home-field advantage against the declining Cuadras, though, so we should be in for a scrap.
