{"id":947621,"date":"2026-10-31T13:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-31T13:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/947621\/"},"modified":"2026-10-31T13:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-31T13:24:10","slug":"usyk-returning-to-cruiserweight-pursuing-benavidez-bout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/947621\/","title":{"rendered":"Usyk Returning To Cruiserweight, Pursuing Benavidez Bout"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"underline text-text-primary font-medium hover:text-blue-70 transition-colors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ringmagazine.com\/fighters\/oleksandr-usyk-5mLRBwodsK5tf2Rb5H6yt6\">Usyk<\/a> wants to fight <a class=\"underline text-text-primary font-medium hover:text-blue-70 transition-colors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ringmagazine.com\/fighters\/david-benavidez-2sP9JGlxC8uGuHONitcEdz\">Benavidez<\/a> at his best, according to Lapin. He also wants to be undisputed at cruiserweight champ once again.A Benavidez fight would also require Usyk to leapfrog <a class=\"underline text-text-primary font-medium hover:text-blue-70 transition-colors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ringmagazine.com\/fighters\/jai-opetaia-56RQmVY5AsNzB4bIPfawmL\">Jai Opetaia<\/a>, The Ring cruiserweight champ.Benavidez has since laid out a three-fight plan at cruiserweight that includes Opetaia, <a class=\"underline text-text-primary font-medium hover:text-blue-70 transition-colors\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ringmagazine.com\/fighters\/2SyKQiEjb5FsnmXDtFAyi9\">Artur Beterbiev<\/a> and Usyk, and said the Usyk fight could happen at either cruiserweight or heavyweight.<\/p>\n<p>The wild card is whether Usyk, who turns 40 in January, is willing to wait. A cruiserweight return in the first half of 2027 would almost certainly have to come before Benavidez-Opetaia, not after it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Usyk wants to fight Benavidez at his best, according to Lapin. He also wants to be undisputed at&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":947622,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[90965,64,63,802,232239,1920,44,85,2974],"class_list":["post-947621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-object-object","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-articles","tag-boxing-news","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-the-ring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947621","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=947621"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/947621\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/947622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=947621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=947621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=947621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}