WBA Heavyweight Champion \u201cIron\u201d Murat Gassiev makes the first defense of his championship crown against 2016 Olympic gold medalist Tony \u201cThe Artist\u201d Yoka atop the upcoming IBA Pro 19 boxing card on July 11 at VTB Arena in Moscow, Russia.<\/p>\n
The 32-year-old Gassiev (33-2, 26 KOs) captured the WBA title with his decisive sixth-round knockout of Bulgaria\u2019s Kubrat Pulev at IBA Pro 13 last December in Dubai.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is an honor to defend the WBA World Heavyweight Title for the first time, and to do it at home in front of my Russian fans makes it extra special,\u201d Gassiev said. \u201cTony Yoka is a tremendous champion, an Olympic gold medallist, a big, strong heavyweight with serious skills. I have huge respect for him. I would like to thank both my team and President Kremlev for this opportunity. On July 11, I will do my absolute best to win and keep the belt in Russia.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 33-year-old Yoka (15-3, 12 KOs), who stands a massive 6\u20197\u201d tall, scored the super-heavyweight crown as part of the 2016 summer games in Rio. His last fight ended in a first-round knockout of Patrick Korte in Lagos.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m going to win this world title for all my people in France and Congo that have not only stuck with me, but still believe in me becoming a professional world champion,\u201d Yoka said. \u201cI\u2019ve been working hard for over two years now with Don Charles and I\u2019m ready to showcase to the boxing world the changes in my professional Boxing. I want to thank Don and my team for backing me 100 percent through this period, as well as Frank and George Warren at the best promoters in the world, Queensberry, for getting me this opportunity which I will make the most of.\u201d<\/p>\n
IBA Pro 19 is co-promoted by IB Challenger, Epic Sports & Entertainment, Patriot Promotion, Ural Boxing Promotions, Queensberry Promotions, and Yoka Boxing, in association with Winline.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WBA Heavyweight Champion \u201cIron\u201d Murat Gassiev makes the first defense of his championship crown against 2016 Olympic gold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,36109,49,48,33601,82],"class_list":["post-697480","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news-results","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697480","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=697480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}