Jai Opetaia will be losing the IBF cruiserweight title this weekend, as the sanctioning body has withdrawn its sanctioning of Opetaia\u2019s fight with Brandon Glanton on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The IBF made the decision official this evening.<\/p>\n
Opetaia vs Glanton is the main event of a Zuffa Boxing card in Las Vegas, and Zuffa will be putting their own vacant cruiserweight title up for grabs in the fight. Because of this, the IBF has chosen to not sanction the fight, as it doesn\u2019t fit with their unification rules that recognize the WBC, WBA, and WBO, but not the new Zuffa titles.<\/p>\n
Because Opetaia is taking part in an \u201cunsanctioned\u201d fight as IBF champ, his title will be declared vacant.<\/p>\n
According to the IBF, the organization had spoken with Opetaia\u2019s team extensively, and Opetaia\u2019s team reportedly had told them that \u201cany belt awarded by Zuffa\u201d would be \u201ccharacterized as a trophy or token of recognition,\u201d but after the press conference this week, they withdrew sanctioning after it was \u201cmade clear\u201d that the Zuffa title \u2014 which Zuffa clearly sees as more than a \u201ctrophy or token of recognition\u201d \u2014 would still be contested.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the second time the IBF has taken their title from Opetaia in this sort of situation. In 2023, the title went vacant after Opetaia decided to take a fight with Ellis Zorro. He regained it in his following bout, beating Mairis Briedis for the vacant title.<\/p>\n
This means that Opetaia is a two-time IBF cruiserweight champion and will have never actually lost the title.<\/p>\n
Opetaia (29-0, 23 KO) is a heavy favorite against Glanton (21-3, 18 KO) for Sunday\u2019s card, which will stream live on Paramount+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jai Opetaia will be losing the IBF cruiserweight title this weekend, as the sanctioning body has withdrawn its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,1920,85],"class_list":["post-524842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524842","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=524842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}