{"id":11615,"date":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/11615\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:05:08","slug":"wbo-orders-callum-smith-to-face-david-morrell-jr-for-interim-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/11615\/","title":{"rendered":"WBO orders Callum Smith to face David Morrell Jr for interim title"},"content":{"rendered":"

With a pending rubber match between Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev keeping the main four light heavyweight titles occupied, WBO president Gustavo Olivieri has ordered Callum Smith to defend his interim belt agaisnt David Morrell Jr<\/a>, giving them 30 days to come to terms.<\/p>\n

Once seen as a star in the making, Morrell (12-1, 9 KO) has struggled to distinguish himself since moving from 168 to 175. His divisional debut against Radivoje Kalajdzic snapped a nine-fight knockout streak and his subsequent showdown with David Benavidez saw him stagger \u201cEl Bandera Roja\u201d but ultimately fall short on the cards.<\/p>\n

His recent victory over Imam Khataev<\/a> did little to rehabilitate his image, as Khataev floored him in the fifth and had a strong argument for earning the decision despite running out of steam.<\/p>\n

Smith (31-2, 22 KO), by contrast, is coming off a career-best performance against undefeated Joshua Buatsi in February<\/a>. Outside of his loss to Artur Beterbiev, he\u2019s taken to his new weight class quite well, showing off the power and durability needed to hold his own against opponents he can\u2019t dwarf.<\/p>\n

Hopeful we see this one, as their styles promise a donnybrook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"With a pending rubber match between Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev keeping the main four light heavyweight titles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11616,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,2350,802,1920,9746,13478,10680,580,585,2352,13480,3163,2351,13479,13476,13477,85,8821,319,8941],"class_list":["post-11615","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-bad","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-callum","tag-david","tag-face","tag-for","tag-front-page","tag-hook","tag-interim","tag-jr","tag-left","tag-morrell","tag-orders","tag-smith","tag-sports","tag-title","tag-to","tag-wbo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11615","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11615"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11615\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}