Alberto Puello "La Avispa (The Wasp)" Calderón

This slick as hell Dominican southpaw you've probably never heard of is the current interim WBA super lightweight champion. He claimed this honor last summer with a deserved unanimous decision over Jonathan Alonso Flete. There have been whispers of him being fed to division king Josh Taylor (who currently wears the WBA super, along with the IBF and WBC Diamond belts at 140lbs) as part of The Tartan Tornado's new promotional deal with Top Rank.

This would be a damn shame, because it would rob a decent fighter of all his momentum (as well as the zero that he can leverage to make himself marketable, coming from an island nation that has struggled historically to become a hotbed of elite boxing activity, with its athletic focus and infrastructure largely diverted instead to baseball and the country's few champions having mostly needed to scratch & claw to earn their way up, with limited major financial backing from abroad) without even necessarily doing all that much for Taylor, given Puello's lack of name value on the global scene. I'd much rather see them stay in their respective lanes - meaning Taylor either unify with José Carlos Ramírez (the WBC & WBO titlist) or rematch Prograis, or else move up to welter for some new challenges, while my dream match for Puello is an unbeaten Caribbean showdown with power puncher Subriel Ahmed Matías Matthew.

In a scenario where TTT and Rougarou both outgrow the division (or simply go chasing paydays/each other at 147lbs), there is room for guys like Puello and Matías to rule this division. Absent that pair of elite talents, we could see a lot of parity and competitive matchmaking among the rest of the ranked crop, but The Wasp and Browny would be my two dark horses to rise above.

Puello vs. Alonso:

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Puello vs. Erick Jonathan López Fonseca:

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Puello vs. Patrick "Elegant" López:

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