Hamzah Sheeraz Walks Away From WBO Title Rather Than Face Janibek

Hamzah Sheeraz is giving up his WBO super middleweight title without throwing a punch to defend it. The unbeaten Brit (24-0-1, 19 KO) told the WBO he's vacating, and the sanctioning body confirmed it today — just two days after Queensberry Promotions won a purse bid worth just over a million dollars for a mandatory against Janibek Alimkhanuly.

That bid was the problem. Sheeraz's cut of the Janibek fight would have landed around $750,000, and his camp clearly did the math and decided the risk-to-reward didn't add up. Janibek (17-0, 12 KO) is the toughest name on paper Sheeraz has been linked to since his disputed draw with WBC middleweight champ Carlos Adames, and there's real money to be made elsewhere against softer opposition.

A Reign to Forget

Sheeraz won the vacant belt by beating Alem Begic on May 23, then defended once against Simon Zachenhuber on July 25. Both landed on major cards, which is about the only thing keeping this from being a footnote. As title reigns go, it was short, quiet, and now it's over — with the strap headed back into the vacant pile before anyone got a signature win out of it.

You can't hammer him too hard for it, though. This is how the sport actually works. If a fighter can make comparable money against a lower-risk opponent while keeping his zero intact, the incentive to take a purse-bid mandatory against a live wire evaporates fast.

The Janibek Question

There's a legitimate gripe hiding underneath all this. Janibek was installed as the WBO's mandatory despite a failed drug test last year that saw the IBF strip him of their middleweight belt. The WBO, for reasons of its own, declined to do the same. So the man now sitting in the No. 1 slot is the same fighter who lost another title over a doping issue, and he hasn't fought since April 2025.

With the belt vacant, Janibek will presumably get matched with someone for it. Behind him in the WBO's top 10 sits unbeaten Diego Pacheco (26-0, 19 KO), who most recently stopped Immanuwel Aleem in the 11th, followed by Jacob Bank, Kevin Sadjo, and Armando Resendiz (16-3, 11 KO), who dropped a unanimous decision to Jaime Munguia last time out. Edgar Berlanga (23-2, 18 KO) rounds out the mix.

Sheeraz, meanwhile, stays unbeaten and stays flexible — no belt, but no bad fight forced on him either. In a division this crowded, that's not the worst position to be in.