A WBA heavyweight title defense over six years in the making will have to wait following an injury to the defending champion. World Boxing News had it confirmed by organizers of Mahmoud Charr vs Kubrat Pulev that the fight is delayed.
Charr, who won the title in 2017 and is yet to put it on the line due to several factors, suffered an ailment that won’t allow the fight to happen as planned on March 30.
The WBA title, which split in 2011 after Wladimir Klitschko, continues to be cursed in an unprecedented run over thirteen years.
Defeating Alexander Ustinov in November 2017, Charr never defended his crown during the first spell. He was stipulated to battle Fres Oquendo in 2018 before Trevor Bryan claimed the interim version to put pressure on the WBA. Oquendo suffered an injury and waited for his chance to reschedule a fight for some time.
In the meantime, Charr and Bryan were ordered to trade blows. Charr and Bryan held a purse bid won by Don King for $2 million before Oquendo stepped in with a legal challenge to the bout. Rather than fighting, Oquendo wanted to take a monetary settlement as he approached his fifties. He kept that legal action going to recoup his losses.
As the issue dragged on, Visa problems scuppered Charr vs Bryan, and King successfully lobbied for the champion to be stripped. Bryan then fought Daniel Dubois, who was the interim champion. Dubois took the regular championship but was not recognized as a world titleholder due to the diluted nature of the belt.
By now, it was 2022, and five years had passed. After a short reign by Dubois, Charr won an appeal to regain the belt in 2023. He was then slated to face Kubrat Pulev on March 30 in the long-awaited first defense of a title. However, injury has unfathomably struck and will push the fight back further. By the time the fight goes ahead, it will almost be a full seven years since Charr became WBA’s secondary ruler.
WBN understands that the situation is being worked on as we speak, with an announcement to be made as soon as possible. As initially planned, Pulev’s clash is still expected to occur in Sofia, Bulgaria.
Fans and media are growing increasingly tired of the sport’s longest-running saga, especially given that the belt was finally out of commission when Dubois lost to Oleksandr Usyk. That plateau lasted for all of five weeks until the controversial belt reared its head again.
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