The heavyweight division picked up two new full champions inside a day of Oleksandr Usyk vacating his titles, with Agit Kabayel elevated to WBC champion and Murat Gassiev promoted to WBA champion, splitting the belts across the division for the first time in years.
Kabayel finally gets his full title
Kabayel had been the WBC’s interim champion since February 2025, when he stopped Zhilei Zhang in six rounds in Saudi Arabia, and defended that interim belt with a third-round knockout of Damian Knyba in January. As Usyk’s mandatory challenger, he was always next in line for a shot at the full title, and Usyk’s decision to vacate rather than fight on handed it to him outright instead.
“Unbelievable. As of today, I am the WBC Heavyweight World Champion,” Kabayel said, reacting to the news. “Words can’t describe what I am feeling right now. This achievement belongs to all of us.” The 33-year-old becomes the first Kurdish heavyweight world champion in the sport’s history and the first German heavyweight champion since Max Schmeling in the 1930s, and has already pledged to defend the belt actively rather than sit on the title.
Gassiev’s route was a different one entirely
Gassiev’s path came via the WBA’s parallel “regular” title, which he won with a brutal knockout of Kubrat Pulev before being elevated to full champion status once Usyk stepped away from the belts altogether. He wasted no time marking the promotion, stopping Peter Kadiru inside six rounds in his first defence as the outright titleholder.
A heavyweight picture that’s suddenly wide open
With Daniel Dubois already holding the WBO strap and the IBF title still to be settled, the division now has three different champions across three sanctioning bodies for the first time since Usyk’s own unification run. It makes for a messier heavyweight picture on paper, but also one with more genuinely live storylines than it has had in years, as Kabayel, Gassiev and Dubois all look to build toward the unification fights that would settle who the real number one actually is.
