Close<\/a>Andreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA, boxing and pro wrestling. In Andreas’ free time, he plays video games, obsesses over music and is a White Sox and 49ers fan. He is also a host for Sirius XM’s Fight Nation. Before joining ESPN, Andreas was a senior writer at DAZN and Sporting News. He started his career as a music journalist for outlets including HipHopDX, The Grammys and Jay-Z’s Life+Times. He is also an NAACP Image Award-nominated filmmaker as a producer for the animated short film “Bridges” in 2024.<\/p>\nMultiple Authors<\/p>\n
The IBF decided to strip Janibek Alimkhanuly of his middleweight title Tuesday due to multiple violations, including a failed PED test and the inability to satisfy his mandatory title defense obligation. He still holds the WBO title.<\/p>\n
Alimkhanuly (17-0, 12 KOs), of Kazakhstan, was pulled from a middleweight unification fight with WBA champion Erislandy Lara four days before they were set to meet in December after testing positive for the banned substance meldonium. Both the A and B samples were submitted to the Voluntary Anti-Doping Association and came back positive for the substance which assists in endurance and shortens recovery time while training.<\/p>\n
The WBO decided in late February to suspend Alimkhanuly for a year but allowed him to keep the title. However, with his inability to defend the IBF title due to his suspension, the IBF has decided to take the title away.<\/p>\n
Alimkhanuly, 32, has also been suspended until May 31 by the Kazakhstan Federation of Professional Boxing and until June 1 by the Association of Boxing Commissions in the United States. Three of his fights were contested in Kazakhstan while 13 have taken place in the United States.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andreas HaleMar 12, 2026, 12:46 AM CloseAndreas Hale is a combat sports reporter at ESPN. Andreas covers MMA,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":529583,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-529582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=529582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/529582\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/529583"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=529582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=529582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=529582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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