By Steve Kim

The last we saw of Nicholas Walters, he was losing his WBA featherweight belt on the scales before his scheduled title defense versus Miguel Marriaga. On the night of June 13th at the Theater of Madison Square Garden in New York, 'the Axe Man' won a twelve round verdict over Marriaga but could no longer call himself a world champion.

It also scuttled plans for a unification bout against WBO titlist, Vasyl Lomachenko, for the fall.

The assumption was that the 29-year old Jamaican would now be competing at 130 pounds. But according to his adviser, Robert Mittleman, that's not the case.

"He's going to stay at featherweight contrary to what other things have been said. He realizes now that he got too big between fights. All these years he's been at featherweight. He got back into the gym one week after the (Marriaga) fight and he's trained hard," Mittleman told BoxingScene.com.

According to Mittleman, the problems began after he knocked out Nonito Donaire last October and was then crowned the Jamaican Sportsmen of the Year for 2014.

"It was party time, which is understandable when you knockout Donaire. It's not right but it's understandable," said Mittleman, who doesn't believe Walters has out-grown the 126-pound class.

"I think Nicholas feels that his own misguided training led to his not making weight.. I wouldn't say he's staying at featherweight forever. His manager (Jacques Deschamps) is talking about 135, 135, but right now I think he'd like to get back the featherweight title but nothing is set in stone but the last time I heard from him and his manager was that they were staying at 126."

It's not clear when Walters will fight again. He has one fight left under his current deal with Top Rank.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.