WBA orders purse bid for Eimantas Stanionis-Shakhram Giyasov title fight

The purse bid for the WBA welterweight title fight between Eimantas Stanionis and mandatory challenger Shakhram Giyasov has been set for November 8.

The sanctioning body announced the purse bid on Wednesday. The fight was initially ordered on September 19, but the camps were not able to reach a deal after a month, according to the WBA.

Promoters must bid at least $150,000. The winning bid will be split between Stanionis (75 per cent) and Giyasov (25 per cent).

Stanionis became the WBA’s secondary “regular” titleholder by virtue of his April 2022 split decision win over Radzhab Butaev. He made his first defense about two years later, winning a unanimous decision over Gabriel Maestre on the May 2024 undercard of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Jaime Munguia. Stanionis was then elevated to the primary titleholder after Terence Crawford vacated his WBA belt in August.

Stanionis, a 30-year-old from Kaunas, Lithuania, is 15-0 (9 KOs).

Giyasov, 16-0 (9 KOs), is a 31-year-old originally from Bukhara, Uzbekistan, and now fighting out of Brooklyn, New York. He was the welterweight silver medalist in the 2016 Olympics and turned pro in 2018.

Giyasov scored some early victories over a pair of recognizable, if faded, names: Emanuel Taylor (UD10) and Darleys Perez (KO1), both in 2019. More recently, he won a pair of elimination bouts to earn this opportunity, outpointing the 27-0 Harold Eduardo Calderon in June 2023 and taking an 11th-round unanimous technical decision over Pablo Cesar Cano in February. In July, Giyasov took a split decision over Miguel Parra.

David Greisman, who has covered boxing since 2004, is on Twitter @FightingWords2 and @UnitedBoxingPod. He is the co-host of the United Boxing Podcast. David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” is available on Amazon.