Floyd Schofield waited 469 days for a world title shot. Sergio Mendoza waited about three weeks. Both of them walked out of the Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Saturday night with gold around their waists — and only one of those stories is the one people will still be talking about in December.
Schofield beat Lucas Bahdi by unanimous decision to claim the vacant WBA lightweight title, the fight he had been pointed toward since he first signed to face Shakur Stevenson back in February 2025. Mendoza, a late replacement nobody expected to survive five rounds, dropped Ricardo Sandoval three times and stopped him in the fifth to take the WBA and WBC flyweight belts. Same card, same night, completely different weight classes of surprise.
Schofield Finally Gets His Belt — Just Not the Way He Pictured It
The scorecards read 116-110, 115-111 and 119-108 for Schofield, who moves to 20-0 with 13 knockouts. Two of those are reasonable. The third is not. Bahdi (20-1, 15 KOs) scored a knockdown of his own in the 11th round and was still in the fight in the final three minutes — a 119-108 card means one judge gave him exactly one round. That is not how anyone in the building saw it.
What Schofield did well was solve a problem. Bahdi is the bigger puncher and he came to Chicago to land one clean right hand, and for long stretches Schofield simply refused to be in front of it. The third round was the turning point: two thundering right hands backed Bahdi up, a right hook to the ear hurt him, and a check left hook to the temple sent him through the ropes for the fight’s first knockdown. From there Schofield switched to southpaw, bounced, circled, and made Bahdi chase.
The problem is that chasing is not the same as being outclassed. Bahdi landed a hard left in the sixth that badly rocked Schofield, and in the ninth a looping right put Schofield’s knee on the canvas without the referee calling it. By the 11th, Bahdi finally got the official knockdown he had been owed — feet tangled, but the count came anyway. Schofield got up, finished the round on his bike, and won the last frame with a left hook that reminded everyone he was still the sharper man.
Schofield was ranked No. 1 by the WBA and Bahdi No. 2 coming in, and this was the fight I previewed as a genuine coin flip in Schofield vs Bahdi: 39-0 Collide for the Vacant WBA Title. I picked Schofield on speed and movement, and that is roughly how it played out — but I did not expect him to eat as many clean right hands as he did. The WBA belt was vacant because Gervonta Davis was moved to “champion in recess” amid his ongoing legal issues, which means the division’s real king is still out there somewhere. Schofield now owns the paper. Whether he owns the weight class is a different question.
The Mendoza Earthquake
Now the story of the night. Ricardo Sandoval was a 7-1 favorite. He had not been knocked out in a 10-year, 30-fight professional career. He was supposed to be defending against minimumweight champion Oscar Collazo, who pulled out with a rib injury and will need weeks to recover, and Mendoza took the assignment on roughly three weeks’ notice as a warm body.
Mendoza dropped Sandoval twice in the second round — a flash right hand followed by a left uppercut that should have ended the conversation right there. Sandoval survived, wobbled again in the third, and looked like a man paying for a 15-month layoff. In the fifth, Mendoza put him down a third time with a short right, and when Sandoval beat the count the referee had seen enough. Sandoval’s corner had nothing to say, because there was nothing to say.
Here is the detail that makes this remarkable. Mendoza’s only professional loss came in April, when he was knocked out in the second round by IBF junior flyweight champion Thanongsak Simsri at Korakuen Hall. That is the same Simsri who flattened Mark Vicelles in an IBF light-flyweight title fight, which I covered in Inoue Repeats, Vicelles Falls: The Weekend Boxing Roundup. Mendoza was fighting two weight classes below his natural size that night and said so afterward: he is a 112-pounder who sacrificed to make 108, and the sacrifice cost him. On Saturday he was a 112-pounder, and Sandoval found out what that means.
Mendoza, now 28-1 with 24 knockouts, dedicated the win to his late brother in a post-fight interview he could barely finish. He also inherits a division with Collazo waiting, which is the fight everyone now wants.
The Rest of the Chicago Card
The undercard produced three stoppages worth noting. Jahmal Harvey stayed perfect at 5-0 with four knockouts, stopping Pedro Castaneda in the third. Jan Paul Rivera moved to 17-0 with a lopsided decision over Abraham Perfecto, all three judges scoring it 99-89. And Cristian Williams handed Asa Stevens his first loss in an eight-round super bantamweight bout, taking it 78-74, 78-74, 77-75. Tristan Kalkreuth, Joshua Edwards, Grant Flores and Naomy Valle also picked up wins.
Agrba Edges Abdullaev in Ekaterinburg
There was a second world title on the line Saturday, on the other side of the planet. Khariton Agrba took a split decision over Zaur Abdullaev in Ekaterinburg to claim the interim WBA junior welterweight belt, with one judge scoring it 117-111 for Abdullaev and the other two going 117-111 and 115-113 for Agrba. Abdullaev, now 21-3, has come up short in three separate interim title fights. Agrba moves to 18-1 with nine knockouts and inserts himself into the 140-pound conversation.
Charlo Out Again, and a Filipino Contender Steps Up
Jermall Charlo has withdrawn from his October 17 super middleweight bout with Koen Mazoudier after suffering an undisclosed training injury. Former titleholder Jose Armando Resendiz steps in on short notice. It is the second time this matchup has collapsed — the first was Charlo’s visa denial for the July card in Sydney. Charlo, 34-0, has not boxed since May 2025.
The Filipino corner has plenty to chew on this week. Carl Jammes “Wonderboy” Martin, 28-0 with 21 knockouts and the WBO’s top-ranked super bantamweight contender, will face Mexico’s David Picasso on October 31 in Riyadh in a world title elimination bout on the Canelo Alvarez-Christian Mbilli undercard. Picasso’s only professional defeat came against Naoya Inoue in Riyadh, so this is a real measuring stick for Martin and a genuine route to a shot at the Japanese monster.
Miel Fajardo, 14-3-2 with 12 knockouts, gets his world title shot on November 26 in Tokyo against IBF flyweight champion Masamichi Yabuki. Fajardo earned the mandatory position in April by stopping Tobias Reyes in the first round in Argentina — four knockdowns in 65 seconds, which is the kind of thing that gets you a plane ticket to Japan. Between Martin, Fajardo and the amateur squad that just delivered Carlo Paalam an Asian Games silver in Nagoya — a run I covered in Whittaker Survives Wallace, Paalam Takes Silver: Boxing Recap — this is about as deep as Philippine boxing has looked in years.
And the country’s reigning world champion, IBF minimumweight king Pedro Taduran, got a gift this week that money cannot buy: Manny Pacquiao climbed into the ring at the Elorde Sports Center and told him to sharpen his footwork. Taduran, a southpaw like Pacquiao, is lined up for a fourth defense in December. If you are Filipino like me, that image — the greatest fighter this country ever produced coaching the only world champion we currently have — is worth more than any rankings update.
As for me, I am still thinking about that 119-108 card. Schofield deserved to win. He did not deserve to win by eleven points against a man who knocked him down. Judging like that is the reason people stop trusting the belts, and it is the one thing from Saturday I would change.