Last month, the International Boxing Federation (IBF) ordered their junior flyweight world champion, Hekkie Budler, to make a mandatory defense against Felix Alvarado. There was a purse bid held earlier this month with only one bidder in the race, Sampson Boxing.

Sampson Boxing bid $25,000.00. The purse bid split will be 75% to Budler and 25% to Alvarado.

The sanctioning body advised all parties that the executed contracts had to be submitted to their office within 15 days of the purse bid or no later than July 20.  The fight was ordered to take place by October 5.

Budler (32-3, 10 KOs), who was coming off a split decision loss to Milan Melindo, pulled off a big upset in May, when he traveled to Japan to win a twelve round unanimous decision over Ryoichi Taguchi to capture the IBF, WBA, junior flyweight world titles.

The victory made Budler a two division world champions, as he previously held the WBA, IBO world titles at 105-pounds - and lost those belts in a big upset to Byron Rojas in March of 2016.

Because of the low purse and pressure from the IBF to make the mandatory defense, Budler made the tough decision of dropping the IBF strap.

"The purse money I was offered to defend was not good," said Budler to Sunday World.

"I think they wanted me to defend it in October and the time to prepare is very limited, not good enough, so I decided to vacate it. The IBF would have stripped me anyway. I would rather give other guys the chance to fight for it.

"It is not good losing it this way taking into consideration that the IBF is the one I wanted to fight for especially after being treated unfairly against former champion Milan Melindo in September last year."

Alvarado (33-2, 29 KOs) will now have to face the highest ranked available contender. He's knocked out his last nine opponents - all within the first three rounds of action.

He's won fifteen fights in a row after suffering back to back twelve round decision losses to Juan Carlos Reveco and Kazuto Ioka back in 2013/2014.