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Although Andy Ruiz is set to defend the WBO, WBA, and IBF heavyweight titles against Anthony Joshua in December, Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn believes there’s a chance those titles will be broken up as Oleksandr Usyk and Kubrat Pulev stand as mandatory challengers for two of those titles.
And if the WBO title happens to become available, Dereck Chisora’s manager, David Haye, believes his fighter could be selected to fight Usyk for the vacant WBO strap. At this point Haye says Usyk’s team have already expressed their interest in a potential Chisora fight, before going on to say:
“The WBO have a convention in Tokyo where I will lobby them. The WBO want exciting fighters, and it makes sense for them to sanction Usyk vs Chisora.”
“My gut says the WBO [will be vacated] because Usyk is a tricky customer,” Haye said. “I believe Joshua will go the Pulev route, a bigger guy who will stand and fight, rather than the Usyk route.”
That’s of course assuming Joshua actually beats Andy Ruiz to win that WBO title back, which plenty of people aren’t confident about. Anyway, Chisora is most recently coming off a stoppage win over David Price while Usyk made his heavyweight debut, stopping Chazz Witherspoon last month.
At this point it seems we’ll just have to wait and see how the dust settles from the Ruiz-Joshua II fight just several weeks away.