Angelo Leo targets unification with Rafael Espinoza after Tomoki Kameda

Angelo Leo has reiterated his openness to facing any of his fellow featherweight titleholders, particularly a unification bout with Rafael Espinoza.

But first, the 30-year-old Leo is scheduled to defend his IBF belt on May 24 in Osaka, Japan, against Tomoki Kameda, a 33-year-old former bantamweight titleholder from that very city.

Leo believes a win over Kameda can set up a unification with Espinoza, who holds the WBO belt.

“It’d be a good fight for the fans,” Leo told BoxingScene. “He’s a Mexican fighter. I’m a Mexican-American fighter. And I think it’d be great for the fans. But I’m open to any of the champions, to be honest, although I think the Rafael Espinoza one would be great.”

Leo,  25-1 (12 KOs), praised Espinoza as one of the best at 126lbs, a division he described as diverse and made up of a lot of talented boxers. Leo said the likes of WBA titleholder Nick Ball and WBC titleholder Brandon Figueroa bring a lot of quality to the division with different styles.

The Las Vegas-based Leo won a world title in a second weight class in August, recording a spectacular 10th-round knockout of Luis Alberto Lopez. Leo previously held the WBO junior featherweight belt for five months, from August 2020 until January 2021, when he lost the title to Stephen Fulton.

Leo moved up to campaign at featherweight in 2023, scoring three consecutive victories before landing a shot at Lopez’s IBF title. After an emphatic win over Lopez, some boxing fans have wondered if Leo would want to run it back with Lopez.

But Leo doesn’t seem interested.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, to be honest,” Leo said. “But if they really push it and they really want it and the fans want it, we’ll do it. My mentality is I’ll fight anyone, but I really honestly don’t think there’s a point to a rematch. I just think I was winning clearly and then it ended by knockout. And I think when there’s a rematch, it’s usually a fight that’s very close and the fans are debating about it. In this case, I don’t think any of the fans are debating about it.”

Leo was slightly ahead on two scorecards at the time of the knockout, 86-85, while the third judge had it 86-85 for Lopez.

Bernard Neequaye is a sports journalist with a specialty in boxing coverage. He wrote a boxing column titled “From The Ringside” in his native Ghana for years. He can be reached on X (formerly Twitter) at @BernardNeequaye, LinkedIn at Bernard Neequaye and through email at [email protected].