The WBO said all the right things while waving goodbye to Oleksandr Usyk, 38, as its heavyweight champion, with the 2024 fighter of the year balking at the sanctioning body’s order to fight England’s Fabio Wardley and instead move toward legacy fights closing his distinguished career.
That split keeps Usyk wearing three other belts, and it frees the WBO to be the first to potentially crown the man who looks to be a generational heavyweight, Wardley’s 20-year-old Queensberry Promotions stablemate and WBO No. 1 contender Moses Itauma.
While Itauma 13-0 (11KOs) first needs to defeat Jermaine Franklin Jnr 24-2 (15 KOs) on Queensberry’s January 24 card in Manchester, England, the fighters’ joint promoter Frank Warren has already said he anticipates Itauma fighting for the belt in victory.
Franklin, who has won three consecutive fights, is expected to be elevated into the WBO top 15 this week, making Itauma eligible to fight for the WBO interim title.
Warren’s title-fight talk regarding Itauma happened before Usyk’s surprising Monday announcement, when he opted to withdraw as undisputed heavyweight champion after being stripped of the claim one year earlier when the IBF wanted him to fight contender Daniel Dubois instead of taking a rematch with former champion Tyson Fury following their May 2024 fight of the year.
Usyk, 24-0 (15 KOs), promptly defeated Fury again, and then knocked out Dubois in the fifth round in July to affirm his greatness as a two-time undisputed champion.
Yet, his reluctance to abide by the WBO’s push for him to defend his belt against top-ranked contender Joseph Parker frayed some feelings along with footage showing him dancing and playing soccer after asking for a medical exemption to postpone the Parker fight.
The request was granted after a follow-up exam, while Parker proceeded to lose his interim-champion status to Wardley, 30, on October 25 by 11th-round TKO at the O2 Arena.
What Usyk has in mind is unknown. He’ll be uniting with a new promotion, and might have his sights set on either a trilogy fight with Fury – who says he’s retired – or with two-time champion Anthony Joshua, who announced his December 19 fight with YouTuber Jake Paul Monday and is expected to participate in a major event for Saudi Arabia boxing financier Turki Alalshikh next year.
WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman will likely discuss his champion’s situation when Usyk appears at the WBC Convention that begins in Bangkok late this month.
Sulaiman said his top contender, interim champion Agit Kabayel, has a January 10 title defense to get through. Sulaiman said he additionally does not feel beholden to a rotation order among the sanctioning bodies who represent a unified or undisputed champion like Usyk.
“We tried to be cooperative, but it wasn’t working,” he said. “There’s no more ‘next in line.’”
An official familiar with Usyk’s WBO stance labeled it “a business decision,” one the sanctioning body wasn’t too sadly bemoaning knowing that Itauma’s fame is surging and that the sanctioning body collects 3% of purses from champions.
“We have a new heavyweight champion coming,” one WBO official said.
