{"id":953742,"date":"2026-11-01T00:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T00:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/953742\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T00:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T00:22:09","slug":"oleksandr-usyk-targets-david-benavidez-at-cruiserweight-in-career-final-chapter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/953742\/","title":{"rendered":"Oleksandr Usyk targets David Benavidez at cruiserweight in career ‘final chapter’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Heavyweight superstar Oleksandr Usyk is eyeing a return to cruiserweight to fight David Benavidez before retiring from boxing, says his adviser Sergey Lapin.<\/p>\n

The 39-year-old former undisputed heavyweight champion last fought in May, when he earned a gritty win over Rico Verhoeven before vacating his titles.<\/a><\/p>\n

Usyk said he wanted a “last dance” in boxing, which was expected to be at heavyweight, but Lapin says the Ukrainian is instead planning to move down a division.<\/p>\n

He says Usyk wants to fight for a vacant cruiserweight world title before setting up a unification bout against undefeated American Benavidez.<\/p>\n

“Oleksandr aims to return to cruiserweight in 2027 and become undisputed again,” Lapin said.<\/p>\n

“First, we are looking at a fight for a vacant world title. Then, the goal is to face David Benavidez to unify all the belts and become undisputed cruiserweight champion.<\/p>\n

“We see 2027 as the final chapter of his career. He wants to finish as undisputed champion in the division where he first won all the belts.”<\/p>\n

Usyk dominated at cruiserweight for the majority of his career, winning 16 fights and becoming the undisputed champion, before moving to heavyweight in 2019.<\/p>\n

There he became a two-time undisputed champion, beating Britons Tyson Fury, Anthony Joshua and Daniel Dubois twice each to stretch his undefeated record to 25 fights.<\/p>\n

Benavidez, 29, has won all 32 of his professional fights. He holds the WBO and WBA cruiserweight titles and will fight Poland’s Michal Cieslak for the WBC belt on 5 December.<\/p>\n

The IBF belt is vacant after Jai Opetaia was stripped of it in March.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Heavyweight superstar Oleksandr Usyk is eyeing a return to cruiserweight to fight David Benavidez before retiring from boxing,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":953743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-953742","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\/953742","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=953742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/953742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/953743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=953742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=953742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=953742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}