By Rick Reeno

According to World Boxing Council President Mauricio Sulaiman, his organization was informed that WBC lightweight champion Mikey Garcia (38-0, 30 KOs) will unify with IBF champion Robert Easter (21-0, 14 KOs).

Garcia captured the WBC title last January with a crushing knockout of Dejan Zlaticanin at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.

But then he moved up to the junior welterweight division to win a twelve round decision over Adrian Broner in July of the same year.

Garcia continued his run at junior welterweight by capturing the IBF world title last month, with a twelve round decision over previously undefeated Sergey Lipinets in Texas.

Initially, Garcia had indicated to the International Boxing Federation that he planned to remain at 140-pounds, and would make any necessary defenses. But then a few weeks later he changed his mind and vacated the belt - and also informed the WBC that he planned to move back to 135-pounds to continue forward as their champion.

The WBC has ordered Garcia to make a mandatory defense against Jorge Linares, who also holds the WBA world title. That fight never came to be, after Linares finalized a deal to defend the WBA belt against Vasyl Lomachenko on May 12th at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Easter captured the title in September 2016 with a action-packed decision win over Richard Commey. He's made three defense of the title since then - with a February 2017 twelve round decision over Luis Cruz, who hit the deck three times, a twelve round decision win over Denis Shafikov in June 2017, and then a hard-fought split decision win over Javier Fortuna in January. There were many who felt Fortuna had done enough to earn the decision, but even in victory he would have been ineligible to capture the title as he came in overweight at the official weigh-in.