{"id":268658,"date":"2025-11-17T23:26:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/268658\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T23:26:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T23:26:08","slug":"fabio-wardley-british-fighter-to-become-world-champion-after-oleksandr-usyk-relinquishes-wbo-belt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/268658\/","title":{"rendered":"Fabio Wardley: British fighter to become world champion after Oleksandr Usyk relinquishes WBO belt"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Fabio Wardley is expected to be elevated to WBO heavyweight champion after Oleksandr Usyk decided to relinquish his title.<\/p>\n

It comes after Ukrainian fighter Usyk informed the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) he would not proceed with a mandatory title defence against Wardley.<\/p>\n

The WBO said Usyk had “elected to relinquish his title after thoughtful consideration”.<\/p>\n

Usyk still holds the WBA, WBC and IBF heavyweight titles, having beaten Daniel Dubois<\/a> at Wembley Stadium in July to become a two-time undisputed heavyweight champion.<\/p>\n

He first became the four-belt undisputed champion in May 2024 by beating Tyson Fury, before giving up the IBF title five weeks later and deciding not to fight the mandatory challenger. <\/p>\n

WBO president Gustavo Olivieri called Usyk “a champion of champions” in a statement. <\/p>\n

“The WBO extends its profound respect, admiration and gratitude to Oleksandr Usyk, an undefeated, two-division WBO undisputed world champion,” Olivieri said.<\/p>\n

“His career stands as one of the most extraordinary and historic of the modern boxing era.”<\/p>\n

The WBO added that its doors “will always remain open to Usyk and his team”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Fabio Wardley is expected to be elevated to WBO heavyweight champion after Oleksandr Usyk decided to relinquish…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":268659,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-268658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268658","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=268658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/268658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/268659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=268658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=268658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=268658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}