Rey Vargas & O’Shaquie Foster both weighed in successfully on Friday afternoon at 129.4 lbs for tonight’s scrap for the vacant WBC world super featherweight title on February 11th, live on Showtime at the Alamodome, in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. Foster (19-2, 11 KOs), and Vargas (36-0, 22 KOs) will fight for the title that Skakur Stevenson recently lost on the scales when he failed to make weight last September in his fight with Robson Conceicao.
The televised portion of tonight’s Vargas-Foster card starts at 9 p.m. ET on Showtime. In the UK., the fight will be shown on FITE TV. It was an interesting face-off, with Foster shoving Vargas’ left arm away when he placed it in front of him while they were posing and facing the audience. Vargas then turned around and glared angrily at Foster, but he chose not to attack him.
Weights:
Rey Vargas 129.4 vs. O’Shaquie Foster 129.4
Mario Barrios 146.8 vs. Jovanie Santiago 145.8
Lenier Pero 242.8 vs. Viktor Faust 234
Claudio Merrero 135 vs. Gonzaleo Fuenzalida 134.8
Eumir Marcial 161.4 vs. Ricardo Villaba 162
Danier Pero 244.2 vs. Daniel Zavala 237.4
David Whitmire 148.8 vs. Keith Foreman 149
Manuel Sifuntes 177 vs. Jesus Aguilar 173.6
James Wholschlegel 173.6 vs. Daniel Heinen 171
Fabien Diaz 139.6 vs. Eleazar Mendiatta 139
Vargas, 32, is vacating his WBC featherweight title to go after the 130-lb title. If victorious tonight, Vargas will be a three-division world champion. He began his career at 122 and moved up in weight to 126 in 2021.
Last July, Vargas dethroned WBC featherweight champion Mark Magsayo by a 12 round split decision.
The Texas native Foster, 29, has yet to win a world title in his 11-year professional career. He’s been out of the ring for the last eleven months since his win over Muhammadkhuja Yaqubov in March of later year.
Foster has won his last nine fights and has looked good lately. However, it’s hard to know whether his impressive winning streak was a sign of improvement in his game or if it’s a case of him being matched against weak opposition.
He did defeat former super featherweight world title challenger Miguel ‘Mickey’ Roman in 2020, but that fighter had seen better days and wasn’t in his prime any longer. if Foster’s recent string of wins was due to soft match-making, we’ll see tonight when he gets inside the ring with Vargas.
The Vargas vs. Foster winner will be in a great position to face WBO super featherweight champion Emanuel Navarrete in a unification fight.