Murat Gassiev-Joey Dawejko official for July 27th

A former cruiserweight elite will soon make his heavyweight debut against the man who knocked out Anthony Joshua.

No, the chubby one.

No, the other chubby one.

Onetime Super Series finalist and unified IBF/WBA “super” cruiserweight champion Murat Gassiev has an opponent for his July 27th return to the ring: rumored Joshua-thumper Joey Dawejko. The fight will air on DAZN alongside the Maurice Hooker-Jose Ramirez super lightweight unification and, presumably, Tevin Farmer’s mandated super featherweight title defense against Guillaume Frenois.

Gassiev (26-1, 19 KO) narrowly edged Denis Lebedev for the IBF belt in 2016, but didn’t receive Lebedev’s WBA belt because reasons. He went on to carve a bloody swathe through the Super Series with a body shot KO of Krzysztof Wlodarczyk and a brutal last-round TKO of Yuniel Dorticos before falling to Oleksandr Usyk in the finals.

This will be his first fight since the Usyk defeat last July.

Dawejko (19-7-4, 11 KO) is coming off of a March 9th majority decision loss to Sergey Kuzmin, which followed UD defeats against Bryant Jennings and Andrey Fedosov. Despite his record, he’s only ever been stopped once, retiring between rounds against Charles Martin in 2013