JEO Santisima and his team will be leaving for the US today, February 13, 2020, less than two weeks before his world championship fight with World Boxing Organization (WBO) super bantanweight champion Emanuel Navarrete on February 22, 2020 (PHL time) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Santisima will be flying to Manila at 5 p.m. and leave for Los Angeles at 9 p.m. He will be with coaches Edito Villamor and Michael Domingo and ALA Promotions president Michael Aldeguer.
The 23-year-old Santisima will wrap up training camp at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing Club in Hollywood.
“We’ll be doing the same routine at Wild Card. But he’ll just have moderate training,” Villamor told SunStar Cebu.
Santisima kicked off his training camp last January after he found out that Navarrete had picked him as his challenger.
Santisima has trained hard at the ALA Gym and sparred with the likes of KJ Cataraja, one-time world title challenger Jonas Sultan, WBO No. 1 ranked super bantamweight Albert Pagara and Japanese Takayuki Sakai.
Santisima, rated No. 5 in the WBO, is 19-2 with 16 knockouts. He just fought twice in 2019, stopping both Indonesian Alvius Maufani and former Oriental and Pacific Boxing Federation (OPBF) super flyweight titleholder Rene Dacquel.
The 25-year-old Navarrete, in the meantime, is 30-1 with 26 knockouts. The No. 3 ranked super bantamweight by The Ring kicked off 2019 with a 12th round stoppage of Isaac Dogboe in a rematch. He followed it up with stoppage wins over Francisco De Vaca, Juan Miguel Elorde and Francisco Horta. (EKA)