Jorge Linares vs. Luke Campbell was a professional boxing match contested on 23 September 2017, for the WBA and The Ring lightweight championship.

[1] In July 2017 Golden Boy Promotions' matchmaker, Robert Diaz, announced that Linares would next fight on 23 September and ruled out a return to Britain to face Luke Campbell.

The plan being to have Campbell to fight on the undercard and if both fighters won their respected bouts, they would meet in the future.

[2] However on 21 July the WBA ordered Linares to make a mandatory defence against Campbell as per WBA rules, a titleholder must fight a mandatory within 9 months, this time would expire on 23 July, with Linares having won the title from Crolla in September 2016.

Campbell became the mandatory challenger when he stopped former interim world champion Darleys Pérez in April 2017.

[3][4] On 27 July a deal was reached for Linares and Campbell to fight at The Forum in Inglewood, California, U.S. on 23 September.

[5][6] During the build up Linares expressed the wish to continue to be involved in big fights saying "I'm in the prime of my career.

[7] Campbell meanwhile insisted he would bring a "different game" to Crolla telling BBC Sport "Linares is a great champion but I feel this is the time.

However many pundits predicted that the Brit would struggle to beat Linares with BBC Radio 5 live boxing analyst Steve Bunce saying "In 2008 Luke was the first English boxer to win a European title in 47 years but Linares is a respected quantity.

Due to Linares taking his foot off the gas, it prevented him from winning the fight with wider margins.

At the end of 12 rounds, one judge scored the fight 115–113 for Campbell, the remaining two had it 115–112 and 114–113 in favour of Linares, giving him the split decision victory.