Oleksandr Usyk has added his name to a long list of heavyweight world champions who have walked away from the championship.
Usyk insists that he will continue to fight, but over the weekend he relinquished his WBC, WBA and IBF versions of the title, and now there is a glorious scramble to get fights sanctioned for the three belts. At the time of Usyk’s announcement, there were men holding the interim, the regular and mandatory positions across the three sanctioning bodies.
Usyk was twice the undisputed heavyweight champion, but to end his second reign, he relinquished the WBO version late last year. As such, Fabio Wardley was elevated to regular WBO champion, but he was dethroned by Daniel Dubois in May. It is thought that Dubois will have a rematch with Wardley; that takes care of one version of the title.
But what of the other three? They will be a bit trickier.
WBC title
By the end of Saturday, the WBC, whose belt is often considered the most prestigious of them all, had decided to upgrade their interim champion to full champion. Agit Kabayel deserves the upgrade; he is unbeaten and has been the leading and avoided challenger for a long, long time. Kabayel in a massive homecoming fight under the stars at a German football stadium is now likely, and it would be the right thing to do.
IBF title
The IBF recently had an eliminator (which is a word we generously use in boxing to make sense of the progress from the top 10 to a world-title fight) between Frank Sanchez and Richard Torrez Jr; Sanchez won in style and is now the IBF’s No 1 contender – nobody is ranked No 2. However, Moses Itauma is ranked No 3, and Filip Hrgovic is ranked No 4, and they are fighting in August. It would make sense to have Itauma and Hrgovic for the vacant title and then commit to a Sanchez fight. It is the smart move – but don’t hold your breath.
WBA title
The WBA situation is also flexible, and Hrgovic and Itauma’s late-summer fight at London’s O2 Arena would work perfectly for the WBA’s vacant heavyweight title fight. Itauma is ranked No 1; Hrgovic is No 6 in the rankings. However, the Russian Murat Gassiev holds a version of the WBA’s title, but unlike Kabayel, he has not been automatically upgraded and that makes sense; Gassiev does not have Kabayel’s global standing. Gassiev does have a fight scheduled for next month in Moscow against France’s Tony Yoka; it is a perfectly reasonable heavyweight fight, but it would be a poor full-title fight.
Back to Usyk
On abdication night, Usyk opened the way for a year of shuffling and potentially exceptional fights, leading at some point next year to a series of fights for the undisputed title; Usyk has beaten Dubois, Tyson Fury and Anthiony Joshua twice each. There was nothing left for him to prove – in a year, there might be.
Meanwhile, the sport’s biggest promoters, brokers and fixers are putting together their bids for boxing’s brand-new world; it feels like the first time in over 10 years that Joshua, Fury and Usyk have not held a version of the world heavyweight championship. The trio has stood sentinel over the heavyweight revolution during the last decade.
It is different now, and there might be a few controversies, but there will definitely be a lot of heavyweight title fights – and good ones – in the next year.
