Somebody's 0 Has Got to Go: Schofield vs. Bahdi for the Vacant WBA Lightweight Crown in Chicago

CHICAGO

There is nothing in boxing quite like a title fight between two undefeated guys who genuinely don't like being in the same room together. Saturday night at Wintrust Arena, the WBA's No. 1 and No. 2 lightweights — Floyd Schofield Jr. and Lucas Bahdi — collide for the vacant WBA lightweight championship on DAZN, and Golden Boy founder Oscar De La Hoya has said it best: somebody's 0 has got to go. As of this writing the card is underway and the main event walks are expected around 11 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT, after the flyweight title co-feature.

The stakes are as clean as boxing gets. The WBA lightweight belt has been in limbo since June, when Gervonta Davis was moved to "champion in recess" status. The sanctioning body ordered its top two contenders to sort it out, and Golden Boy Promotions and Most Valuable Promotions cut a deal before it ever reached a purse bid. The winner of this one doesn't just get a belt — he becomes the WBA's man at 135 in a division where Shakur Stevenson and Devin Haney set the bar, and where Davis himself is reportedly targeting a return in early 2027. A win tonight puts the victor in the middle of every meaningful lightweight conversation on the planet.

The styles: speed vs. power, and a whole lot of talking

Schofield (19-0, 13 KOs), the 24-year-old they call "Kid Austin" after the Texas city he moved to as a kid, is the WBA's top-ranked lightweight and No. 7 with The Ring. He is fast, loud, and famously talkative — at Thursday's final press conference he leaned over toward Bahdi's side of the stage and whispered "Ima whoop his ass" without realizing the mic was live, then said it again. Bahdi didn't need a hot mic: "Saturday night I'm going to expose his flaws," the 32-year-old Canadian said. "I'm not saying you're scared but you probably should be. I'm about to make you famous for the wrong reasons."

Strip away the theater and this is a genuine styles clash. Schofield is the quicker, more athletic fighter, a guy who believes he has seen everything Bahdi can bring — he told The Ring that his sparring partners are better than Bahdi. Bahdi (20-0, 15 KOs), ranked second by the WBA and eighth by The Ring, talks like a puncher and 15 knockouts in 20 fights says he is one. His name jumped off the prospect lists in July 2024, when he flattened Ashton Sylve in the sixth round. But here's the wrinkle: his three most recent wins — over Armando Casamonica, Ryan James Racaza and former world champion Roger Gutierrez — all went the distance. He hasn't fought since August 2025, a 14-month layoff heading into the biggest night of his life.

Schofield has his own rust problem, and it's worse. He has boxed all of 78 seconds since November 2024. The story is well known by now: he was three days out from challenging then-WBC lightweight champion Shakur Stevenson in Riyadh in February 2025 when he pulled out during fight week with an illness, hospitalized and replaced by Josh Padley. He came back in June 2025 and demolished former world champion Tevin Farmer in 78 seconds — two knockdowns, one-sided, over — and then a wrist injury scuttled a November date with JoJo Diaz. In November 2024, before all of that, he survived an 11th-round knockdown against Rene Tellez Giron to win a 12-round decision. This is his first world title opportunity, and De La Hoya has called it a can't-miss action fight. The question hanging over everything is whether 707 days of mostly inactivity meet the moment.

The weigh-in drama isn't going away

Saturday's fight almost didn't happen on the scale. Schofield came in over the 135-pound limit on his first attempt Friday, then dropped six-tenths of a pound and made weight on his second try; Bahdi weighed 134. That should have been the end of it, but Friday also brought a public argument over the second-day rehydration clause — the limit on how much weight each fighter can put back on before the fight. Schofield said Bahdi's camp wanted to add two pounds to the agreed fight-night weight of 145; Bahdi's team denied it and said all they wanted was for Schofield to arrive at the agreed weight. Per Chris Mannix's reporting, both men passed the Saturday check: Schofield at 143, Bahdi at 142.8.

That's a resolved dispute, but it's the kind of pre-fight friction that tells you both camps believe the margins here are thin. Schofield is the favorite; Bahdi is the live underdog. Nobody in either camp is acting like this is a coronation.

Undercard already delivered: Kalkreuth and Edwards score stoppages

Before the main event walks, the undercard did its job. Cruiserweight Tristan Kalkreuth (18-1, 13 KOs) handed Ivan Rosado his first professional loss in dominant fashion, ending things just 44 seconds into the third round of a scheduled 10-rounder. The 24-year-old used his height and reach to keep the shorter Rosado on the back foot from the opening bell; Rosado stayed on his feet but couldn't mount enough defense to satisfy the referee, who stepped in to end a one-sided contest.

And 2024 U.S. Olympian Joshua Edwards (8-0, 7 KOs) beat veteran Craig Lewis (15-10-1) by stoppage when the 42-year-old could not continue at the start of round three in their scheduled eight-round heavyweight clash. Edwards controlled the action and hurt Lewis with a combination near the end of the second; the injury ended the contest after two completed rounds, another early finish for the Olympian as his professional run continues.

Earlier, super featherweight Jan Paul Rivera-Pizarro (17-0, 7 KOs) defeated Abraham Perfecto Valdez (14-3, 9 KOs) by unanimous decision over ten rounds — 99-89 on all three cards, with a second-round knockdown that set the tone. Valdez, coming off a fourth-round stoppage loss, lasted the distance but was outworked throughout.

The co-feature is sneaky good

Don't sleep on Ricardo Sandoval (27-2, 18 KOs) vs. Sergio "Yoreme" Mendoza (27-1, 23 KOs) in the co-feature. Sandoval defends his WBC and WBA flyweight titles, and Mendoza — a Mexican replacement for Oscar Collazo, who withdrew with a rib injury — brings genuine danger with 23 knockouts in 27 wins. Sandoval-Collazo is the fight everyone wanted; Mendoza is the landmine nobody ordered. American Olympian Jahmal Harvey opens the televised card against Pedro Castro in an eight-round lightweight bout.

What's at stake for the winner

The lightweight division is the sport's most stacked weight class, and the WBA strap is the golden ticket into all of it. The winner walks out of Chicago as a world champion at 24 or 32 — Schofield would become one of the youngest current champions in the sport, Bahdi would cap a long, patient climb that started with 11 straight knockout wins. Either way, the name on that belt gets inserted into the Tank Davis conversation immediately, because Davis is still the franchise player of this division even from "champion in recess" status, and a return in early 2027 means the new champion's first defense could be the biggest fight of the year.

De La Hoya said he strongly feels this could be a fight-of-the-year candidate. That's promoter talk, sure. But two undefeated guys with something to prove, a war over the scale already in the rearview, and a vacant title on the line in a packed Chicago arena? That's the kind of setup where promoter talk becomes prophecy.

Main event ring walks are expected around 11 p.m. ET / 8 p.m. PT, following the Sandoval-Mendoza co-feature. The card is live on DAZN. For more on the lightweight picture, read our Shakur Stevenson-Devin Haney 145-lb story and Jake Paul's cleared return to boxing. The boxers section has the full rankings and fighter pages.