Here mate, the official WBC ranking for their bantamweight class:
https://wbcboxing.com/en/bantamweight/Alejandro Santiago (Barrios) is rank number 4. And yes, Nonito is now rank number 1. And the number 2 Nawaphon Sor Rungvisai, which I thought to be Donaire's opponent for the belt will fight another Filipino in Reymart Gaballo, it is called a title eliminator but obviously the fight between Donaire and Santiago is for the vacant belt already. But maybe the winner of Gaballo vs Sor Rungvisai will fight the champion next.
It is highly likely to happen that the winner between Gaballo and Sor Rungvisai will fight the winner between Nonito Donaire and Alejandro Santiago because whoever the winner between Gaballo and Sor Rungvisai will become the no.1 challenger of the title if ever a mandatory title defense is triggered.
Now it is interesting if both Filipinos won the fight, Gaballo had lost once to Nonito Donaire via 4th round KO so it would be interesting to watch if Gaballo had improved and be able to dominate a fight against Donaire.
In particular, I am a person who has total confidence in Gaballo and Donaire, for me the two are the ones who will win, now between these two, it will be difficult but due to everything they have wanted to demonstrate and want to achieve, it can be Donaire whoever wins, for me if this fight takes place, Donaire will win, I don't know, it could be by knockout or by a few rounds, Donaire gives me the impression that he wants his fights to last a short time so as not to lose shape, his training should Being very hard, also as everyone says that due to age he does not have the same performance, I think that Donaire wants to shut up.
And so WBC ordered a fight between Ugas and Barrios for the interim belt. Ugas is rank 2, while Barrios is rank 5. Thurman is rank 1 and will be fighting the champion in Spence, however it's 154 lbs.
So not sure why WBC ordered such fight for the interim belt, maybe they know that Spence will go up in weight if he wins against Thurman. On the other hand, Barrios has just like 2 fights in this division, lost to Thurman and then won against a unknown boxer. There is also rank 3 and 4 boxers in their organization, but they were bypass by Mario here, and then Ugas who did lost to Spence in his last fight.
In my case, I'm not also sure why these governing bodies keep on ordering such fights for the interim belts to have interim champs when in-fact they are not giving the champions a mandatory title defense especially in the welterweight. They should just focus on giving the existing champions a mandatory title defense because the division is already stacked up at the moment, we have lots of good boxers that is not yet given a chance to be a champion because they are just letting the title holders to keep the belts for a long time while ducking some fights. And now another fight for an interim belt? That's just nonsense, IMO.
Politics
or possible that both Ugas and Barrios can create good market to bring money, I see your point and it did happened, there are good fighters in this division who don't have the same opportunities like what they've given to both Barrios and Ugas, though Ugas should have this opportunity since he was a former champ.
Will Spence move up to a new division when he wins against Thurman? Personally, I don't see him doing that he likes to continue
holding his belt and the no-loss records, he will just continue to choose the fights and will enjoy his VIP treatment.
All of Spence's behavior suggests that he will go to another division, I don't know which one, but I think he is looking for more fame, new challenges, and if this is the case, then I think Crawford will have all the desire to fight him, It's a shame for Crawford since this boxer has been preparing to beat a Spence that I really don't know what he wants, it's hard to be able to Speculate on what the boxeaodr5 wants, because there are challenges that he doesn't take on and that's not It seems good to me, and a boxer should always be ready for challenges, for rematches, otherwise what they do doesn't make sense to me.