Brandon Figueroa won one fight. Elijah Pierce lost another. And the results of both of their boxing matches had consequences on the WBA’s featherweight ratings.

Figueroa had been rated No. 1 by the sanctioning body going into his bout with WBA titleholder Nick Ball last month. Figueroa won the belt with a 12th-round TKO, which left the No. 1 spot vacant. (Mirco Cuello has the WBA’s secondary interim title.)

But the person who had been rated No. 2 was Pierce. He wasn’t going to move up – three weeks after Figueroa beat Ball, Pierce suffered a second-round stoppage loss to Lorenzo Parra on February 28. 

One would therefore assume that the person previously at No. 3, former title challenge Otabek Kholmatov, would therefore be upgraded to No. 1.

That assumption would be wrong. Instead, Ivan Chirkov leapfrogged past Kholmatov, going from No. 4 to No. 1 in the WBA’s latest monthly rankings update, which was released on March 1. 

Nor did Kholmatov go from No. 3 to No. 2. Instead, Tomoki Kameda, who had been No. 5 as of a month ago, also jumped past Kholmatov and is now No. 2. Kholmatov remains at No. 3.

And it’s not that any of those three has been particularly active or beaten anyone of note recently. 

Chirkov, 14-0 (3 KOs), last fought in March 2025, outpointing the 36-19-2 Nasibu Ramadhani. 

Kholmatov, 13-1 (12 KOs), has boxed just once since suffering a 12th-round stoppage loss to Raymond Ford in their Ring Magazine Fight of the Year award winner for 2024, which was for the vacant WBA belt at 126lbs. Kholmatov’s return came last April, when he won via eighth-round TKO against the 30-12-2 Jason Canoy Manigos.

Kameda, 42-5 (23 KOs), was a bantamweight titleholder long ago and has since come up short in title fights against Rey Vargas at 122lbs in 2019 and Angelo Leo in Kameda’s most recent outing, at 126lbs last May.

After Chirkov, Kameda and Kholmatov is Ball at No. 4, followed by Luis Nery, Jan Paul Rivera-Pizarro, Parra, Reito Tsutsumi, Reiya Abe, Victor Hernandez, Luis Reynaldo Nunez, Christian Olivo Barreda, Jonathan Cabrera Sanchez, Liam Davies and Ryuto Owan.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.