{"id":850103,"date":"2026-08-08T02:30:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:30:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/850103\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T02:30:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T02:30:15","slug":"boxing-news-2026-jake-paul-and-nakisa-bidarian-australian-event-most-valuable-promotions-cherneka-johnson-and-desley-robinson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/850103\/","title":{"rendered":"Boxing news 2026: Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian, Australian event; Most Valuable Promotions; Cherneka Johnson and Desley Robinson"},"content":{"rendered":"

Exclusive: Most Valuable Promotions co-founder Nakisa Bidarian has signalled his intent to host an event in Australia by 2027 ahead of Cherneka Johnson\u2019s bout in Orlando, Florida<\/a>. <\/p>\n

New Zealand-born Australian-based fighter Johnson will fight Denmark\u2019s Dina Thorslund on Sunday morning (AEST) as the co-main event where the title of undisputed bantamweight world champion will be on the line. <\/p>\n

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Nakisa Bidarian and Jake Paul. \u00a0Getty Images for Netflix<\/p>\n

Thorslund previously held both WBC and WBO belts<\/a> but vacated both titles after withdrawing from a fight due to pregnancy. <\/p>\n

Johnson will be joined on the card by fellow Australian Desley Robinson who will fight Tamm Thibeault. <\/p>\n

Robinson and Johnson are joined by Ebanie Bridges<\/a> and Skye Nicolson as the four Australians on MVP list, which is co-owned by Jake Paul<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Bidarian himself has a connection to Australia, with his wife born in Adelaide. <\/p>\n

The boxing powerbroker previously confirmed to nine.com.au<\/a> in May that he was looking for the \u201cright opportunity\u201d to do an event in Down Under, which Matchroom Boxing boss Eddie Hearn had approached him about. Bidarian had also said Paul would like to fight in the country. <\/p>\n

Since then, Hearn and Bidarian have formed an alliance for women\u2019s boxing and nine.com.au asked the latter if there was progress on that \u201cright opportunity\u201d. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been spending time thinking about a Jake Paul fight in Australia,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cNow with Skye Nicolson – let\u2019s see how Cherneka does on Saturday and Desley – we have enough Australian talent, champions on the roster, to do an event. <\/p>\n

\u201cSo absolutely 2027 in Australia I want to do an event with all these incredible athletes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson and Robinson themselves are only new to the MVP stable. Johnson has been there for more than a year, featuring in two fights which she\u2019s both won. <\/p>\n

Her battle with Thorslund will be one of her toughest bouts yet as the latter returns from a tragic miscarriage, which she said has made her more motivated than ever to reclaim her titles. <\/p>\n

Bidarian praised Johnson\u2019s intention to take on this fight. <\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we\u2019ve called her and said here\u2019s a day, here\u2019s a fight, she\u2019s said yes, I\u2019m ready, I want it,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cMany people thought she\u2019d want to push away from the Dina fight, Dina\u2019s 24-0 … but Cherneka said \u2019I\u2019m a fighter, this is what I do, I want to test myself against the best … I\u2019m taking these belts back to Australia.<\/p>\n

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Desley Robinson and Cherneka Johnson with their world title belts.\u00a0Most Valuable Promotions<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s going to be a tough fight to judge, I don\u2019t know if it\u2019s going to end in a finish … Neeks comes to fight, there\u2019s no backing down and Dina is a bulldozer, so I can\u2019t wait to see it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Robinson will form the other co-main event fight with this also her third fight for MVP. Robinson only recently fought Mary Spencer in May, and won. She is currently the IBF and WBO middleweight world champion.<\/p>\n

Her opponent, Thibeault, is a Canadian Commonwealth Games gold medal winner and now has a 4-0 record in professional boxing. <\/p>\n

\u201cThat fight has a lot of implications for the weight class and future of Desley and Tamm, the ring belt is on the line which is very meaningful because two weeks later Claressa Shields is fighting in the same weight class against another Australian in Kaye Scott,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a quick turn for Desley, so I give her a lot of credit. She fought in May and when we asked her to think about coming back for this show, she didn\u2019t hesitate. She\u2019s a fighter through and through, she\u2019s a single mother of three. Juggling motherhood and being a world champion is pretty incredible and her willingness to get back in the ring so quickly speaks to who she is.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fight night in Florida will be the fifth edition of MVP\u2019s year-round global platform for women\u2019s boxing, and is titled MVPW-05.<\/p>\n

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Crystina Poncher interviews Jake Paul and Nakisa Bidarian at the Infosys Theater at Madison Square Garden.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

It marks another step in the progress of MVP which recently merged with the Professional Fighters League as it attempts to shake-up the MMA scene. <\/p>\n

Bidarian said he was \u201cvery excited\u201d by how the merger could impact MVP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had our first MMA event on May 16 which as of today is the most viewed MMA event in US history, and we saw an opportunity to build on that momentum and to do that in an organic way was the most logical path to ensure success for as long as possible,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJake and I are building MMA like we built boxing; four, five, six, seven years to get to a place we\u2019re now in through this merger, which now has 315 athletes on the roster, which now has global infrastructure and experience putting on events. <\/p>\n

\u201cI think having a world-class CEO in John Martin who is a media titan but also an MMA lover since he was in his 20s, gives us a great start to becoming a dual-dominant player in combat sports, in boxing and MMA.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Most Valuable Promotions co-founder Nakisa Bidarian has signalled his intent to host an event in Australia by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":850104,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-850103","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\/850103","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=850103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/850103\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/850104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=850103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=850103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=850103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}