Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev finally meet on Saturday night at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for the four lightweight championships. They headlined a card appropriately titled IV Crown Showdown.
Beterbiev, who holds the IBF, WBO and WBC belts, boasts a professional record of 20-0, with all twenty wins coming by way of knockout, making him the only boxing champion with a 100% knockout rate. Dmitry Bivol, the WBA titlist, is no slouch, coming in at 23-0 with twelve KO wins. Both lightweight champions are in the top ten of any pound-for-pound ranking.
This fight was supposed to take place in May, but Artur Beterbiev suffered a torn meniscus during training. For fight fans, this is a dream matchup: a boxer, Bivol, facing a puncher, Beterbiev. Artur Beterbiev has been an irresistible force in the ring, with his slick skills and heavy hands stopping all comers. Dmitry Bivol is a technician in the squared circle, dominating his competition, including outboxing Canelo Alvarez. According to oddsmakers, Bivol is a slight favorite, but most observers see this as a quintessentially 50-50 fight.
Despite the stylistic differences between the two fighters, there won’t be a massive size disparity on Saturday night. Bivol is six feet tall, with a 72-inch reach, and Beterbiev stands five feet, 11 ½ inches tall, with a 73-inch reach.
Bivol and Beterbiev themselves are not total strangers. The two were amateur teammates when they boxed in the Russian national team, although they were in different weight categories. “I remember him from the national team, but we were never friends,” Beterbiev said.
Neither man currently fights under the Russian flag, although both have ties to the country. Dmitry Bivol was born in Kyrgyzstan, but his family moved to St. Petersburg when Bivol was in elementary school. However, Bivol trains out of Joel Diaz’s gym in Indio, California. Artur Beterbiev represented Russia at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, but once he turned professional, he moved to Montreal.
Artur Beterbiev recently discussed his strategy for the fight. You don’t need to be a world class trainer to guess what a man with twenty knockouts in twenty fights will try to do. “If I land, everyone can be eliminated,” Beterbiev said at a press conference. “At the same time, we don’t think about a knockout, it’s not the main thing in our team.”
Before the fight, the big drama was not between Beterbiev and Bivol. Promoter Eddie Hearn criticized Artur Beterbiev for not helping promote the big fight. “At the first press, Beterbiev said about three words. I found him quite arrogant because he flew over him, and his team (…) And it’s like, wait a minute, they pay you an absolute fortune, you have all the you owe it to me. I couldn’t care less, but in a way, I don’t expect it He comes and starts rolling with Bivol here tonight, but you are a monster, you have your role to play in this fight, you get a huge amount of money, let’s play the game a little bit.”
While I understand where Eddie Hearn is coming from, I don’t buy into his complaint. Artur Beterbiev had twenty fights and won twenty fights by knockout. Beterbiev is doing something right in preparing for these fights; why would you want to mess with that? Eddie Hearn should be able to promote a massive event with a giant budget, whether or not one of the two fighters chooses to engage with the media. Hearn wants Beterbiev to help him do his job, but is Hearn going to step into the ring at any moment and take punishment for Beterbiev? Frankly, Eddie Hearn is making a load of money promoting a fight he’s not in.
In 2022, before his victory over Zurdo Ramirez, Bivol was asked about a rematch with Canelo Alvarez. “Money is good, but the legacy, I think, is better. I also like money. Everyone loves money. But money is not the main thing that I think about when I came to boxing. When I box, I want to story. If I thought about the money, I would never be here,” said Bivol. Fortunately, Saudi Royal Turki Alalshikh can take care of those concerns. It appears that Bivol and Betervbiev will take home about $10 million each.
Bivol said defeating Beterbiev to become the undisputed lightweight champion would be more meaningful than beating Canelo Alvarez. “It’s not about personality; it’s about the belt. Of course, the fight for the belt is much more meaningful to me, to be marked in history. It’s a lot. Of course, it’s much more meaningful.”
But enough money and legacy talk, how will the fight go? Has Beterbiev fully recovered from his torn meniscus, which he suffered about six months ago? Can Beterbiev break Bivol’s will with his power, as he has done to so many before? Can Bivol land enough effective punches to make Beterbiev respect his punching power? Will Beterbiev have an answer to the power punch that Bivol used so effectively against Canelo Alvarez? Depending on how the fight goes, can Beterbiev box effectively against Bivol, or can Bivol land power shots on Beterbiev? How will any man respond to the inevitable adversity fighting in a massive struggle like this?
These are just some of the questions fight fans have been asking and debating as the thought of a Dmitry Bivol vs Artur Beterbiev matchup has tempted boxing fans over the years. Come tomorrow, the time for questions is over. These two great champions finally meet.
