Thailand to help former two-time heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury as a sparring partner<\/a> for his recent victory against Arslanbek Makhmudov. Having originally campaigned at cruiserweight, the 33-year-old southpaw has had mixed results when stepping into boxing\u2019s most lucrative weight class. Lerena defeated European contenders Bogdan Dinu and Mariusz Wach in a good start to life at heavyweight. However, a\u00a0third-round\u00a0stoppage against Daniel Dubois on the Fury vs Derek Chisora 3 undercard followed. Lerena has since had three successful outings at\u00a0bridgerweight, with another loss at heavyweight in between,\u00a0a much closer\u00a0unanimous decision\u00a0against Justis Huni in Saudi Arabia.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\u201cTo be\u00a0honest with you,\u00a0I plan to campaign\u00a0wherever\u00a0the best fights are and where the best fights are to be made for me,\u201d Lerena said in answer to his preferred weight class. \u201cThat means:\u00a0bridgerweight, heavyweight or cruiserweight.\u00a0Cruiserweight will be a bit difficult to make, but definitely at heavyweight there are some big fights to be made.\u00a0Lerena against the Huni, Lerena against [Richard]\u00a0Riakporhe. There are so many\u00a0big\u00a0fight to be made. I lost in my last fight at heavyweight on points in an eliminator against Okolie, but it was just a bad night for me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The division where Lerena holds a world title is the newest weight class in boxing. The\u00a0224-pound\u00a0weight class acts as a bridge between cruiserweight and heavyweight, drawing comparisons to cruiserweight, which was invented by the WBC in 1979. The WBC\u00a0is\u00a0also the\u00a0pioneer\u00a0of\u00a0bridgerweight, creating the division in 2020. The WBA have followed in\u00a0recognizing\u00a0the new division, but the IBF, WBO and\u00a0Boxrec\u00a0are yet to get on board.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0a good\u00a0thing,\u201d Lerena said of\u00a0bridgerweight. \u201cThere are a lot of belts\u00a0at the moment\u00a0and a lot of belts on the line from all the different organizations, but the most important\u00a0thing is for a fighter to stay winning. When you are winning and you are winning well, you push your share price right up.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WBC\u00a0bridgerweight\u00a0world champion Kevin Lerena defends his title in a rematch with Ryad\u00a0Merhy\u00a0at the Hall des Expositions in Charleroi,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":611432,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,297040,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-611431","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-kevin-lerena","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611431","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=611431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/611432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}