{"id":210281,"date":"2025-10-19T04:44:21","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:44:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/210281\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T04:44:21","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T04:44:21","slug":"moses-itauma-british-heavyweight-plans-unclear-as-kubrat-pulev-plans-murat-gassiev-fight-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/210281\/","title":{"rendered":"Moses Itauma: British heavyweight plans unclear as Kubrat Pulev plans Murat Gassiev fight"},"content":{"rendered":"

Promoter Frank Warren says Kubrat Pulev must defend his WBA ‘Regular’ title against British heavyweight Moses Itauma next.<\/p>\n

Bulgarian Pulev has announced plans to fight Russian Murat Gassiev on 12 December, despite being ordered to face 20-year-old Itauma.<\/p>\n

Queensberry’s Warren, who promotes Itauma, said earlier this week that his team were “pursuing” a fight with Pulev.<\/a><\/p>\n

That was after the WBA ordered the match-up and gave both sides 30 days to negotiate a deal.<\/p>\n

But 44-year-old Pulev’s promoter Ivaylo Gotzev, who is the CEO of Epic Sports and Entertainment, said on Thursday that the WBA has agreed to let the veteran make a voluntary defence, rather than the mandatory Itauma fight.<\/p>\n

BBC Sport has seen a WBA notice from 14 October that orders Pulev to take on Itauma as his next opponent.<\/p>\n

Gotzev said: “Despite recent noise, we have an official WBA resolution authorising Kubrat Pulev’s first title defence to be a voluntary, and in line with that, we’ve locked in a terrific opponent in Murat Gassiev.”<\/p>\n

In an earlier statement issued to media, Gotzev had claimed the Pulev-Gassiev fight was “signed and sealed” and that Itauma would have “to wait his turn”. It also said Itauma had been offered a place on the Pulev-Gassiev undercard.<\/p>\n

An updated statement, however, removed direct mention of Itauma by name.<\/p>\n

Speaking to BBC Sport on Thursday, Warren said: “Pulev has to fight Moses next.”<\/p>\n

The WBA has been contacted for clarity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Promoter Frank Warren says Kubrat Pulev must defend his WBA ‘Regular’ title against British heavyweight Moses Itauma next.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206255,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-210281","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206255"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}