{"id":771851,"date":"2026-07-01T10:18:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:18:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771851\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T10:18:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T10:18:09","slug":"moses-itauma-told-to-hold-talks-with-frank-sanchez-over-ibf-title-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771851\/","title":{"rendered":"Moses Itauma told to hold talks with Frank Sanchez over IBF title fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Briton Moses Itauma has been ordered by the IBF to hold talks with Cuba’s Frank Sanchez about fighting for the vacant heavyweight title.<\/p>\n

Last week Oleksandr Usyk relinquished his IBF, WBA ‘super’ and WBC belts.<\/p>\n

The IBF said that, “in accordance with IBF championship rules”, it wants Sanchez, who is number one in their heavyweight rankings, to fight number three contender Itauma.<\/p>\n

It said they have until 29 July to reach an agreement.<\/p>\n

Itauma, 21, is scheduled to fight Croatia’s Filip Hrgovic<\/a> at London’s O2 Arena on 29 August in what he has called his “toughest fight”. <\/p>\n

He could pull out of the Hrgovic fight or agree to fight Sanchez after that bout.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport has contacted Itauma’s promoter Queensberry for comment.<\/p>\n

Itauma claimed an impressive fifth-round stoppage<\/a> over Jermaine Franklin in Manchester in March.<\/p>\n

Although the IBF wants to arrange a bout for the vacant title, the WBC upgraded interim champion Agit Kabayel to champion after Usyk gave up its belt.<\/p>\n

Two-time undisputed heavyweight champion Usyk, who was required to fight German Kabayel after he was granted an exemption to fight Rico Verhoeven<\/a> in May, is now free to fight any opponent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Briton Moses Itauma has been ordered by the IBF to hold talks with Cuba’s Frank Sanchez about fighting…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771852,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-771851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771851","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=771851"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771851\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}