So far, July has produced the goods at light middleweight. First there was Karmazin-Spinks in St Louis, and just a few days ago we witnessed the rematch between Shane Mosley and Fernando Vargas. All four fighters wanted to close the gap with WCup leader Oscar De La Hoya...

On July 8, Roman Karmazin (#5, 1800 pts) lost his IBF light middleweight title to Cory Spinks (#5; 1600 pts at 147lbs), who had moved up to challenge the Russian. Former "undisputed" welterweight champion Cory Spinks won a majority decision over Karmazin, with one judge scoring the bout 114-114, the other two saw it 115-113.

Exactly one week later, at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Shane Mosley (#2, 2200 pts) stopped Fernando Vargas (#10, 1000 pts) again, this time in round six, after he had floored Vargas with a left shot. The "Ferocious" fighter managed to get up, only to face an unanswered series of punches from "Sugar". The pair had already met in February, when Mosley stopped his foe in the tenth.

As a result of all this, Cory Spinks enters the 154lbs WCup ranking in third spot with 1800 WCup points. Mosley adds 1000 points to the 1000 he had obtained thanks to his previous victory this yar, which makes him second with 2000 points. Oscar De La Hoya has in fact pocketed the same number, but only needed one fight to achieve this feat, so he stays on top of the WCup ranking.
Moving the the total ranking at light middleweight, we notice a reverse top-3. Spinks has upped his number of total points to 3400, which is sufficient to take the lead. Mosley trails by 200 points, Oscar, now third, is further behind with 2360 points.

CN