Murat Gassiev holds the WBA heavyweight title. Tyson Fury and Anthony Joshua hold no belts. So why are Gassiev’s promoters hearing that Fury and Joshua could fight for the WBA Super heavyweight title on December 11?
That question threatens to turn a straightforward blockbuster into another WBA title mess. Fury–Joshua does not need a belt to sell, but putting one on the line while the organization already has a champion would give Gassiev’s team every reason to object.
Gassiev’s promoters have formally demanded that the WBA confirm or deny the reports. Co-promoter and legal counsel John Wirt argues that Gassiev should either be elevated to Super champion following Oleksandr Usyk’s departure or get the first chance to fight for that status. The WBA’s current champions list names Gassiev as its World heavyweight champion and lists no Super champion in the division.
“If anyone should be fighting for the WBA Super heavyweight title, it is Murat Gassiev, the reigning champion, not two boxers who currently hold no world title between them,” Wirt said in the statement supplied by Gassiev’s team.
There is a financial incentive staring everyone in the face. Fury–Joshua would generate purses far beyond those of a typical Gassiev defense, and a sanctioning body benefits from attaching its title to a major event. That does not prove the WBA has made a decision for money. It does make the organization’s reasoning crucial if it chooses two challengers for a vacant Super belt while its existing champion waits outside the ring.
The WBA would also be inviting back its old two-champion problem. Fans spent years trying to work out why one division needed both a World champion and a Super champion. Usyk’s departure gave the organization a clean opening to recognize Gassiev as its sole heavyweight titleholder.
Creating another champion for Fury–Joshua would make the distinction harder to defend. The WBA still uses both titles in some divisions, so this would be a choice it has the power to make, not an impossible procedural move.
Gassiev has a simpler objection: his team says nobody consulted him. “I have defended this title in the ring, not in a press release,” he said. “I am ready to fight anyone — Fury, Joshua, anybody.”
Neither Fury nor Joshua needs to be accused of avoiding Gassiev to see the advantage of this arrangement for them. They could fight each other for a higher WBA designation without first beating the man who currently carries the organization’s heavyweight belt. Gassiev would keep a title, but the biggest fight in the division would claim the bigger one.
Wirt says his client’s rights are reserved, which puts the WBA on notice. It does not mean an injunction has been filed or that the December event is in danger of being halted. The immediate issue is more basic: the WBA has yet to announce this reported title plan, and Gassiev’s team wants an answer before the fight is sold as a championship contest.
Fury–Joshua will draw attention with or without a belt. If the WBA adds its Super title, it will have to explain why its reigning champion never got into the fight for it.
The odds of the WBA reversing course on moral or sporting grounds sit at zero. A sanctioning body never looks at letters of protest when a monster payday is sitting on the table. In modern boxing, outrage from a fighter camp is treated as background static until it hits a courtroom.
Gilberto Mendoza and the WBA brass are staring at a December 11 global Netflix spectacle in Cardiff featuring two of the biggest financial draws in British boxing history. The sanctioning fee cut alone, capped at the maximum five hundred thousand dollar limit across both corners, guarantees the organization pockets massive revenue. Staging an obscure mandatory defense with Murat Gassiev in Eastern Europe would yield loose change by comparison.