Oleksandr Usyk is off the hook when it comes to facing a WBA mandatory challenger, but secondary titlist Kubrat Pulev has been tapped to face Fabio Wardley
Y’know, it really had been too long since the WBA did a WBA thing.
President Gilberto Mendoza announced today that he’d given “super” champion Oleksandr Usyk 24 months to fulfill his mandatory obligations “with the intention of allowing the fighter to face the most relevant opponents in the division.” It’s unclear to me why he’s doing this, as I’ve never known them to actually stick to their regulations on that front; usually they just stay quiet until the goat entrails that guide most of their decision-making tell them it’s time.
As Usyk has publicly stated his desire to retire within two fights, this basically lets him off the hook for good, which I won’t complain about.
Mendoza and co. will instead lean on their “world” title, one of the few left standing after they got off their butts and consolidated most of the rest, to keep things moving. Due to very funny legal shenanigans, that title belonged to Mahmoud Charr until 43-year-old Kubrat Pulev (32-3, 14 KO) took it from him in December, and now the WBA has ordered Pulev to defend against Fabio Wardley (18-0-1, 17 KO).
Wardley is 13 years Pulev’s junior and coming off a monstrous knockout of Frazer Clarke; he really should demolish Pulev, whose best wins in the last five years came over Charr and Jerry Forrest.
As a fun coda, the victor must then fight Michael Hunter (24-1-2, 17 KO) by October 25th. If you’re wondering what Hunter’s done to earn this, so am I; two of his last four wins came over opponents with <=.500 records and he lost wide to Artem Suslenkov on an IBA show, though that was technically an amateur bout and thus doesn’t appear on “The Bounty’s” record.
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