{"id":726171,"date":"2026-06-09T23:01:28","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:01:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726171\/"},"modified":"2026-06-09T23:01:28","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T23:01:28","slug":"advisor-says-wbc-cruiserweight-champ-noel-mikaelian-intends-to-face-david-benavidez-not-jai-opetaia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/726171\/","title":{"rendered":"Advisor says WBC cruiserweight champ Noel Mikaelian intends to face David Benavidez, not Jai Opetaia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\">Anthony Girges, advisor for WBC cruiserweight champion Noel Mikaelian, told BoxingScene Tuesday that Mikaelian prefers to face\u00a0WBO cruiserweight champ David Benavidez and defend his title, rather than face Australia&#8217;s unbeaten Jai Opetaia.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">On May 29, Mikaelian, 28-3 (12 KOs), was reported to be in advanced negotiations to meet Zuffa Boxing cruiserweight champion Opetaia, however, hours after it was reported by BoxingScene, the WBC ordered Mikaelian to meet Benavidez, 32-0 (26 KOs), instead.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Girges, advisor for WBC cruiserweight champion Noel Mikaelian, told BoxingScene Tuesday that Mikaelian prefers to face\u00a0WBO cruiserweight&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726172,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,13038,43137,126019,82],"class_list":["post-726171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-david-benavidez","tag-jai-opetaia","tag-noel-mikaelian","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726171","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=726171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726171\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}