WBA "regular" cruiserweight world champion Beibut Shumenov has vacated his world title amidst questions about whether or not an eye injury will end his career.
The governing body announced that Shumenov vacated his title and that it will promote Yunier Dorticos as the organization's secondary champion. The organization put out the following statement below announcing Dorticos' ascension to secondary world champion and the plan to unify the titles.
On Monday, World Boxing Association championships committee, released a resolution regarding the cruiserweight division status.
Firstly, it was made public the relinquishment of the division regular champion, the Kazakhs Beibut Shumenov because he can no longer fight based on medical recommendation after suffering an injury to the eye. For that reason, it was decided to promote Cuban Yunier Dórticos, who was supposed to fight Shumenov, from interim to regular champion more than a year ago without fighting, eliminating the interim title.
Second, Russian boxer Denis Lebedev was authorized to fight Australian Mark Flanagan for the for the Cruiserweight super championship. However, the winner must fight Dorticos en 120 days, to have only one champion in this division.
The resolution was sent to all parties involved and it will and its intention is to ensure the activity to the division that had a year without a title fight.
Denis Lebedev, the WBA "super" cruiserweight champion, will defend his title against Mark Flanagan on July 10 in Ekaterinburg, Russia. The winner of that fight will have to unify the WBA titles within 120 days of the Lebedev vs. Flanagan fight.
Dorticos, who was previously the organization's interim champion, had been scheduled to fight Shumenov for several months. They were scheduled to fight in their mandatory bout on April 29 in Las Vegas, but the fight was called off when Shumenov suffered the eye injury in training about 10 days before the bout. Shumenov was also the WBA light heavyweight champion from 2010-14.
