Finally.

After a longer-than-expected wait, Bakhram Murtazaliev will fight for his first major title.

Murtazaliev will face Jack Culcay for the vacant IBF junior middleweight title Saturday night at Stadthalle in Falkansee, Germany. The scheduled 12-round bout will air live on RBB in Germany (10 pm GMT/ 4 pm ET).

At Friday’s weigh-in, Murtazaliev weighed in at 153.6 pounds. Culcay came in at 153.7 pounds.

Murtazaliev (21-0, 15 knockouts) has been the IBF’s number-one contender for more than four years. The 31-year-old from Grozny, Russia—who now trains in Oxnard, California—defeated Jorge Fortea via unanimous decision in a November 2019 title eliminator.

However, a series of step-aside offers came in lieu of an actual title shot.

“He was on hold for a long time,” Egis Klimas, Murtazaliev’s manager, told The Ring. “He was tricked by (Jermell) Charlo not fighting him. Then (Charlo) released his belt.

“We were the mandatory, now we’re fighting for the vacant title. It’s not the best with what we can do, but this is the situation. We are still blessed to have Bakhram fight for the world title belt and become a world champion on Saturday.”

Murtazaliev has fought just four times since he became the mandatory challenger. All were in non-televised affairs on Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) undercards. His team agreed to that route to clear a path for Jermell Charlo (35-2-1, 19 KOs) to become The Ring and undisputed 154-pound champion.

Charlo stopped Brian Castaño in the tenth round of their May 2022 rematch to fully unify the division. He was since relieved of all four sanctioning body titles but still holds The Ring 154-pound championship.

The IBF belt became available when Charlo declined to move forward with an ordered mandatory title defense versus Murtazaliev. Charlo bowed out on the morning of the already delayed purse bid hearing last November.

“We had a very long, difficult run,” Klimas said “When he arrived here (in the United States), he was thrown into the gym with all the sharks, with all the guys who had 300-400 amateur fights, who had 10-12 professional fights. He took a very long and a hard road, proved himself, became a good prospect, became a great contender, then he became the mandatory for the IBF.”

The development has left Murtazaliev out of the ring since a December 2022 eight-round points win over Roberto Valenzuela, Jr.

It comes in stark contrast to the protected career of Culcay (33-4, 14 KOs), The Ring’s No. 10-rated junior middleweight.

The 38-year-old Ecuador-born boxer—who moved to Germany at age five—previously held a secondary version of the WBA 154-pound title. His brief ended in a March 2017 split decision defeat to Demetrius Andrade on home soil in Ludwigshafen.

A second consecutive defeat came seven months later when he dropped a ten-round decision to then-unbeaten Maciej Sulecki. Culcay still made his way to another title eliminator, this time at middleweight. It came versus Sergiy Derevyanchenko, who won a split decision in their April 2019 meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Eight wins have followed since he returned to junior middleweight. He enters his second career title fight. Both went to purse bids and were won by his promoter.

Saturday’s fight is presented by AGON Sports, who won a January purse bid to bring this matchup to Germany.  It comes at the tail end of the holy Ramadan season, a circumstance Murtazaliev—a devout Muslim—begrudgingly accepted.

Despite the long wait and the politics of the sport, Murtazaliev and his team are grateful to finally arrive at this day.

“His dream was to fight for the (world) title,” said Klimas, who also manages Vasiliy Lomachenko, Oleksandr Usyk, and Egidijus Kavaliauskas. “He wanted to become a champion. This is his chance now. There’s nothing we can do, regarding boxing. This sport is going to have frustrations and if you’re going to follow your frustrations, you’re going to lose your path.

“This is his path and that’s where he is going.”

Francisco A. Salazar has written for The Ring since October 2013 and has covered boxing in Southern California and abroad since 2000. Francisco also covers boxing for the Ventura County (California) Star newspaper. He can be reached at [email protected]

Follow @FSalazarBoxing

READ THE LATEST ISSUE OF THE RING FOR FREE VIA THE NEW APP NOW. SUBSCRIBE NOW TO ACCESS MORE THAN 10 YEARS OF BACK ISSUES.