Former WBA Super and IBF cruiserweight king Murat Gassiev will continue his heavyweight campaign in a 10-rounder against ex-European champion Erkan Teper at the Dynamo Volleyball Arena in Moscow on July 22.
Perhaps the forgotten threat of the heavyweight division, the hard-punching Gassiev (27-1, 20 KOs) debuted at the weight last October with a first-round dismissal of Nuri Seferi. Remarkably, Russian tank Gassiev is still only 27 with a July 2018 points loss to Oleksandr Usyk in the Season 1 final of the World Boxing Super Series his only blemish to date.
Teper (21-3, 13 KOs) is best known for his controversial two-round win over Liverpool’s David Price in July 2015. Despite Teper failing a drugs test, the EBU inexplicably insisted that the result stood after declaring its European title vacant.
The 39-year-old German has scored two wins since suffering an eighth-round KO loss to Robert Helenius in September 2018 and presents a stiffer heavyweight test for Gassiev than his debut in the division.
