Gassiev has told The Ring he would happily go behind enemy lines for the chance to become unified heavyweight champion.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me it doesn\u2019t matter where I fight,\u201d said Gassiev (34-2, 27 KOs). \u201cGermany, neutral territory or the moon. It doesn\u2019t matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never choose the place. I will go to Germany. I am a fighter and I don\u2019t care where I fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gassiev\u2019s last fight took him back to Russia for the first time in five years as he stopped Peter Kadiru at Moscow\u2019s VTB Arena in the first defense of his world title on July 11.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was happy to fight in Moscow because it meant my mum could come,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was not hard for her, only a two-hour flight, very easy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the same flying to the U.S. or something like that because she is not young anymore. It was nice to have her there, but really, for a fight you need only you, your coach, your opponent, a referee and three judges. That\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gassiev and Kabayel have been elevated to full world champions following Oleksandr Usyk\u2019s surprising decisions to vacate his three remaining sanctioning body titles. Gassiev had been the WBA\u2019s \u2018\u201cregular\u201d champion while Kabayel held the WBC\u2019s interim title. The IBF, meanwhile, remains vacant.<\/p>\n
Kabayel picked up the WBC strap with a sixth-round knockout of Zhilei Zhang in Saudi Arabia on February 22 last year before returning to Germany to defend it against Damian Knyba, whom he stopped in the third on January 10.<\/p>\n
That fight took place at Rudolf Weber-Arena in Oberhausen, Germany, and completely sold out within three days and his Queensberry promoters are keen to cultivate that support further.<\/p>\n
That may mean a unification with Gassiev next, but there is also a chance the Russian will look to book a voluntary defense before pressing ahead with Kabayel encounter.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course a unification fight is much better, but I have good people around me right now,\u201d Gassiev said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe in my coach 1,000 percent so if he says unification we will go for unification. But if he says defense, we will go for a defense. Maybe next year or maybe this year we fight Kabayel. Whenever it happens it\u2019s a good fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut right now, I stay in my city with my family and there are no thoughts about boxing right now to be honest. I was in camp for six months so I need a rest mentally. If you don\u2019t rest you can go down very quickly, and once you go down it\u2019s hard to get up.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the next two or three weeks we will start to talk. But right now, a little bit of a rest, no boxing. I\u2019ll watch some soccer, play some soccer, go fishing and think about some other sports.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m focusing on my life, myself and Agit is focusing on his life. When we start talking, it\u2019s on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gassiev has told The Ring he would happily go behind enemy lines for the chance to become unified…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64705,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49092,20264,49095,49094,22326,5,49093],"class_list":["post-64704","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-germany","tag-object-object","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-articles","tag-boxing-news","tag-feature","tag-germany","tag-the-ring"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64704\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/germany\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}