Oleksandr Usyk vs David Benavidez might be a reality for 2027, and it would see Usyk moving back down to cruiserweight, not Benavidez going up to heavyweight.<\/p>\n
But the former undisputed cruiserweight king would rather face Benavidez (32-0, 26 KO) at cruiserweight, because he\u2019d like to go undisputed at that weight a second time, matching what he\u2019s done as a heavyweight.<\/p>\n
Usyk (25-0, 16 KO) vacated all of the heavyweight titles this year, and his only fight for 2026 is going to wind up being a sort of curious novelty bout where he stopped kickboxing legend Rico Verhoeven in the 11th round, after 10 rounds of struggle that left several questions.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s entirely possible this would wait until the late summer or early fall of 2027. Usyk\u2019s birthday is in January, so he\u2019ll be 40 if and when this fight does take place, whether it\u2019s that late into next year or earlier.<\/p>\n
Will Usyk vs Benavidez happen, and do you like the idea? Let us know down in the comments section, and even if you\u2019re on the go, you can join the conversation with the SB Nation app for iOS<\/a> or Android<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk vs David Benavidez might be a reality for 2027, and it would see Usyk moving back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":952805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,711,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-952804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952804","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=952804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/952804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/952805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=952804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=952804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=952804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}