{"id":673757,"date":"2026-07-04T17:37:16","date_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:37:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/673757\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T17:37:16","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T17:37:16","slug":"murat-gassiev-loses-opponent-gets-promotion-to-full-wba-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/673757\/","title":{"rendered":"Murat Gassiev loses opponent, gets promotion to full WBA champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">It\u2019s been an up-and-down day for former cruiserweight champ Murat Gassiev. Early this morning, the IBA, which is slated to host \u201cIron\u2019s\u201d next fight on July 11th, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DaSgNRSufV5\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">revealed on Instagram<\/a> that he\u2019d been upgraded from secondary to full WBA heavyweight titlist after Oleksandr Usyk vacated his remaining belts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Hours later, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DanRafael1\/status\/2072729232363433996\" rel=\"nofollow\">news broke<\/a> that he\u2019ll need a new foe for his inaugural defense, as Tony Yoka is out due to a back injury. Per <a href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/boxing\/story\/_\/id\/49251347\/sources-yoka-injures-back-withdraws-title-clash-vs-gassiev\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">ESPN<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/ringmagazine\/status\/2072787755772379610\" rel=\"nofollow\">The Ring<\/a>, Joe Joyce (16-4, 15 KO) is a leading choice of replacement; \u201cThe Juggernaut\u201d is currently slated to face Artem Suslenkov on that same show, so that\u2019s the path of least resistance, but it would result in a world title challenger who\u2019s dropped two straight and four of his previous five.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">Not that Gassiev\u2019s (33-2, 26 KO) heavyweight championship journey was all that more glamorous. Once a genuine terror at 200, Gassiev\u2019s first real test since falling to Usyk in the WBSS finals saw him drop an uninspiring decision to Otto Wallin in 2023. Subsequent victories over Ken Ljungquist and Jeremiah Milton somehow earned him a crack at 44-year-old WBA \u201cworld\u201d champ Kubrat Pulev, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badlefthook.com\/boxing-news\/112032\/murat-gassiev-smokes-kubrat-pulev-for-secondary-title\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">who outclassed Gassiev for five rounds before eating a monster hook that put him down for the count<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1upudxki _174s0un1 _174s0un0 _1mt21p01\">And now he\u2019s officially a two-division champion.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s been an up-and-down day for former cruiserweight champ Murat Gassiev. Early this morning, the IBA, which is&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":673758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6102,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-673757","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-news","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673757","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=673757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/673757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/673758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=673757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=673757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=673757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}