Dmitry Bivol’s promoter Eddie Hearn still insists he won last Saturday’s fight against Artur Beterbiev and should be the undisputed lightweight champion today.
If Hearn succeeds, Bivol will have another opportunity to fight unified champion Beterbiev for his titles. We don’t want Bivol to fail to commit like last time, lose, and then have Hearn complain that he won and make a fuss about wanting another rematch. Fans don’t want to see endless replays.
Hearn wants a rematch for his beaten fighter, Bivol (23-1, 12 KO), but it’s out of his hands.
His Excellency Turki Alalshikh will have to decide if he wants Bivol to challenge the undisputed champion Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) or if he goes in line to earn the shot by defeating one of the winners, David Benavidez, David Morrell . or Joshua Buatsi.
Bivol fought well in the first four rounds, but didn’t do much in the last eight rounds. There were very few punches landed by either fighter during rounds one through four. Hearn says Bivol won either four of the first five or all of the rounds.
That was obviously not possible because there was not enough offense from Bivol to win more than two. The punch statistics were very close, but Beterbievs punches were much harder.
“I’m not going to go back into my shell. I’m a bit of a stick about my emotions in the fight. I doubled down. We won the fight, and we want a rematch,” said Eddie Hearn Matchroom Boxinginsisting that his fighter Dmitry Bivol deserved the victory against Artur Beterbiev, and now demands a rematch.
“The scorecard 116-112 surprised me, and I thought it was unacceptable. I was surprised how three judges, not one of them said that Dmitry Bivol fights when you see the general reaction. I really believe that Dmitry Bivol deserves to be the undisputed champion”.
Hearn should not have been defeated by the score of 116-112 because it was obvious that Beterbiev took the fight in the last six rounds. Bivol was doing nothing but using his Sugar Ray Leonard style, which he copied from Ray’s fight against Marvin Hagler. This fight was considered controversial by many fans who had seen it years ago.
“I think Bivol boxed incredibly well. He gave some rounds at the end of the fight. He should have been more active in those rounds. For me, Dmitry Bivol was the winner. If you really know your boxing, you know what Dmitry Bivol was doing in that fight.
“If you look at most of that fight, he was brilliant. Artur threw so many shots, but how many did he land cleanly? Where he was sitting three rows back, they all gave it to Dmitry Bivol.
“Beterbiev landed a bunch of punches later in the fight. He didn’t land very well in the first part of the fight. I felt after four or five rounds, it was either a clean sweep or I gave Beterbiev a round,” Hearn said.
Again, neither fighter landed many punches in the first half of the fight, but Beterbiev was the one connecting with the hardest punches by far. You could feel Beterbiev’s punches when they landed, and they made a lot of noise.
“That particular judge didn’t get it right,” Hearn said of the judge who scored it 116-112 for Beterbiev. “I had it 8-4 (for Bivol). 7-5 being really unbiased. From where I was sitting, six feet from the ring, I felt that Dmitry Bivol was in control of the fight for most of the fight,” Hearn said.
The judge who scored it 116-112 obviously saw Beterbiev dominating the second half, as many did, and won at least two of the first six rounds. It is easy to reach that identical point because Bivol did nothing in the second of the fight. He did not win the first six rounds. At best, Bivol won three of the first six and then conceded in the last six.
