{"id":520168,"date":"2026-06-26T21:23:16","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T21:23:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520168\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T21:23:16","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T21:23:16","slug":"usyk-to-relinquish-title-belts-but-not-retiring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/520168\/","title":{"rendered":"Usyk to relinquish title belts but not retiring"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>World heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk has announced he will relinquish his title belts.<\/p>\n<p>The Ukrainian currently holds the WBC, WBA and IBF straps.<\/p>\n<p>The unbeaten 39-year-old insists he is not retiring but says the &#8220;well-considered&#8221; decision will &#8220;open new opportunities&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Usyk said in a video posted on X: &#8220;It&#8217;s a good day to say that I want to vacate all the belts I currently hold.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I want to make them available so the guys who are next in line can fight for them.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Friends, I am leaving the belts but I\u2019m not leaving the sport because I still have my last dance.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He captioned the video with the message, &#8220;This is a well-considered decision that I am confident will open new opportunities for me. This is not the end of the story. The continuation lies ahead.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Usyk last fought in May, when he stopped Dutch kickboxer Rico Verhoeven in the 11th round, although not all of his heavyweight titles were on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk has announced he will relinquish his title belts. The Ukrainian currently holds the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":520169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-520168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=520168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/520168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/520169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=520168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=520168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=520168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}