{"id":899063,"date":"2026-09-20T16:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-20T16:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899063\/"},"modified":"2026-09-20T16:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-20T16:06:10","slug":"heavyweight-ko-artist-pulls-out-of-agit-kabayel-world-title-fight-days-after-contract-was-done","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/899063\/","title":{"rendered":"Heavyweight KO artist pulls out of Agit Kabayel world title fight days after contract was ‘done’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite having to scramble around for a new opponent, Agit Kabayel remains set to defend his WBC title in Germany later this year.<\/p>\n

The 33-year-old was elevated from \u2018interim\u2019 to full world champion in June, shortly after Oleksandr Usyk decided to vacate his remaining three belts<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Prior to that, Kabayel claimed his secondary title with a sixth-round finish over Zhilei Zhang, before making a successful defence against Damian Knyba last January.<\/p>\n

Having scored previous stoppages over Frank Sanchez and Arslanbek Makhmudov, too, the Kurdish-German has established himself as a top five heavyweight and one of the division\u2019s most formidable body punchers.<\/p>\n

Now, though, Kabayel must put his world-level credentials beyond reasonable doubt and make a successful first defence of his WBC strap.<\/p>\n

Initially, the opponent of choice was thought to be Nelson Hysa, who confronted Kabayel after stopping Thomas Narmo in two rounds<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n

According to promoter Frank Warren, however, the unbeaten Albanian agreed terms only to subsequently withdraw his interest in the world title opportunity.<\/p>\n

Speaking with IFL TV<\/a>, the Queensberry Promotions boss insisted that an alternative opponent for Kabayel will be revealed soon.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Hysa] came into the office, we agreed terms \u2013 contract and everything done \u2013 and he sent a message a couple days later saying he didn\u2019t want the fight.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we\u2019re moving on. We\u2019re announcing Agit\u2019s fight next week. All I\u2019m in is the Agit Kabayel business in Germany. He\u2019s going to have a top 10 opponent, and he\u2019ll defend his title. And he\u2019s looking next year to unify.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor somebody to turn down a world title fight is beyond me. Most fighters dream of fighting for the world title.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Kabayel looking to unify his division next year, he could find himself facing the winner of Daniel Dubois and Fabio Wardley\u2019s WBO title rematch on October 17.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite having to scramble around for a new opponent, Agit Kabayel remains set to defend his WBC title…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":899064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":["post-899063","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\/899063","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=899063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/899064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}