{"id":522963,"date":"2025-10-23T20:00:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T20:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/522963\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T20:00:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T20:00:14","slug":"raymond-muratalla-vs-andy-cruz-goes-to-matchroom-after-purse-bid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/522963\/","title":{"rendered":"Raymond Muratalla vs Andy Cruz goes to Matchroom after purse bid"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Cruz (6-0, 3 KO), a two-time Olympic gold medalist and one of the finest amateurs of this generation, ran over Hironori Mishino in a final eliminator this past June shortly after Vasiliy Lomachenko\u2019s retirement <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badlefthook.com\/2025\/6\/9\/24446193\/ibf-officially-upgrades-raymond-muratalla-lightweight-champion-boxing-news-2025\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">upgraded Muratalla\u2019s (23-0, 17 KO) interim belt to the real deal<\/a>. The pair initially negotiated a November showdown, presumably on one of Riyadh Season\u2019s mega-shows, but failed to seal the deal. This led Muratalla to turn his attention to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.badlefthook.com\/boxing-news\/109808\/raymond-muratalla-vs-floyd-schofield-reportedly-in-talks-for-november\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">voluntary defense against Floyd Schofield<\/a>, which also fizzled on the launchpad.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup duet--article--standard-paragraph _1nfb3k4i _16w9vov1 _16w9vov0 ls9zuh1\">Though Muratalla had a 12-month window for voluntary defenses, his inability to secure one prompted the IBF to push up the deadline and ultimately order this purse bid. He still has to sign on and could theoretically ditch the belt rater than fight Cruz, but with Top Rank in a holding pattern while it hunts for a broadcast partner, he\u2019s desperately short on other options.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cruz (6-0, 3 KO), a two-time Olympic gold medalist and one of the finest amateurs of this generation,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,4496,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-522963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-boxing-news","10":"tag-sports","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}