{"id":606899,"date":"2026-05-27T16:23:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:23:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606899\/"},"modified":"2026-05-27T16:23:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T16:23:08","slug":"tony-yoka-lands-heavyweight-world-title-shot-against-champion-murat-gassiev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/606899\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Yoka lands heavyweight world title shot against champion Murat Gassiev"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The upper echelon of the heavyweight division will continue to take shape this summer after it was officially announced that <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/murat-gassiev\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Murat Gassiev<\/a> and Tony Yoka are set to do battle.<\/p>\n<p>Former cruiserweight world champion Gassiev won the WBA Regular heavyweight title back in December with a sixth round stoppage win over Kubrat Pulev, and had been linked to make a defence of that belt against rising star Moses Itauma.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, he will now meet Olympic gold medallist Yoka, who had due to compete last month until <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/c17vjqv5n5zo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">planned opponent Lawrence Okolie was forced to pull out after a failed drugs test<\/a>, with the Frenchman now given a chance to challenge for a version of the world title.<\/p>\n<p>Gassiev and Yoka will meet at the VTB Arena in Moscow on July 11, and the Russian is expecting a difficult challenge but remains confident of success.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cTony Yoka is an Olympic Champion. He is a big, strong, experienced boxer with a solid amateur background. He is an Olympic champion, and this definitely won\u2019t be an easy fight. That said, I believe I have a greater desire to retain my title and to beat him.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Yoka is trained by Don Charles, who recently guided Daniel Dubois back to the world heavyweight title, and the 34-year-old believes that will be pivotal in the match-up with Gassiev.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m going to win this world title for all my people in France and Congo that have not only stuck with me, but still believe in me becoming a professional world champion.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI\u2019ve been working hard for over two years now with Don Charles and I\u2019m ready to showcase to the boxing world the changes in my professional boxing.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/news\/usyk-addresses-retirement-plan\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">With unified world heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk seemingly nearing the end of his career<\/a>, the winner of July\u2019s bout may place themselves in a good position to potentially be upgraded to full WBA champion at some stage in the future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The upper echelon of the heavyweight division will continue to take shape this summer after it was officially&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606900,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-606899","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\/606899","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=606899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606899\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606900"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}