A secondary heavyweight title will be on the line less than a month after a clash for the division’s undisputed championship.
krikya360.com has learned that WBA ‘Regular’ titlist Mahmoud Charr will hit the road for a planned title defense versus former two-time title challenger Kubrat Pulev. The pairing is set to take place on a yet-to-be-finalized date in March, in Pulev’s native Bulgaria.
Big Fight Weekend’s Dan Rafael was the first to report the development.
Charr (34-4, 20KOs) was reinstated as the secondary titleholder per a court settlement reached last September. The agreement stipulated that he had to next defend his title versus Brooklyn’s Jarrell Miller, who bypassed the opportunity to instead face Daniel Dubois on the December 23 ‘Day of Reckoning’ card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Miller suffered his first career defeat in a tenth-round knockout, though in a far more lucrative opportunity.
It marked the continuation of a frustrating search for Charr, who has struggled to land the fights he has craved and passionately pursued through the years.
Pulev (30-3, 14KOs) accepted the offer after several heavyweights before him turned down the opportunity. The 42-year-old former unified title challenger rebounded from a July 2022 twelve-round defeat to Derek Chisora—who reportedly rejected the chance to face Charr—with a ten-round shutout victory over Poland’s Andrzej Wawrzyk last December 14 in Costa Mesa, California.
Prior to the setback versus Chisora, Pulev’s only career defeats came at the championship level. He suffered a fifth-round knockout to then-lineal and unified WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in November 2014. Eight wins followed before he was knocked out in the ninth round by Anthony Joshua, who successfully defended the WBA, IBF and WBO belts in a December 2020 meeting at OVO Arena Wembley.
Charr has fought just three times since his November 2017 vacant secondary title win over Aleksandr Ustinov. He has been out of the ring sine a December 2022 second-round knockout of Nuri Seferi in Hamburg, Germany, the headquarter location for Charr’s promoter, Erol Ceylan’s EC Boxing.
The bout will mark his first title defense of two separate title reigns. He was eventually stripped of his title for failure to defend his title, largely attributed to a twice-canceled fight versus Trevor Bryan. Both fallouts were due to Charr not having the necessary P1 Visa paperwork to travel to the U.S. for the Don King-promoted event.
Charr sued King and the WBA, and sought reparations, which led to his second and current title reign.
Strangely, the bout will come after an undisputed champion will be potentially crowned in the February 17 Tyson Fury-Oleksandr Usyk undisputed heavyweight championship. England's Fury (34-0-1, 24KOs) will defend his lineal and WBC crown versus Ukraine's Usyk (21-0, 14KOs), who risks his unified WBA, IBF and WBO titles. Charr will be a mandatory challenger in waiting for the winner, though behind IBF number-one contender Filip Hrgovic and interim WBO titlist Zhilei Zhang in the rotation.
Jake Donovan is a senior writer for krikya360.com. X (formerly Twitter): @JakeNDaBox