By Jim Dower: Undefeated interim WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (9-0, 7 KOs) stayed unbeaten with an impressive 4th round technical knockout victory over 32-year-old southpaw Robert Berridge (29-6, 21 KOs) on Thursday evening at the Forum in Nizhny, Tagil, Russia.
The 26-year-old Bivol knocked Berridge down three times in the fight. Berridge was down twice in round 3 and a final time in round 4. The action was stopped by referee Gustilla Padilla after Bivol knocked Berridge down with a right hand in the 4th round.
Berridge suffered a bad cut over his right eye from the flurry of shots that Bivol hit him with in the process of dropping him. Padilla had the ringside doctor examine Berridge’s cut, and he promptly called an end to the fight.
In round 3, Bivol knocked Berridge down with a right hand to the head. Moments later, Bivol dropped Berridge for a second time in the round with another right hand to the head. Bivol got a little carried away with himself after knocking Berridge down, as he hit him with a right hand while he was on one knee on the canvas. The referee let Bivol get away with the late shot without taking a point away. It looked bad. Berridge was definitely on the canvas when Bivol hit him.
Before Bivol knocked Berridge down in round 3, he was getting hit his left hands quite a bit in the round. Berridge was able to connect fairly easily to the head of Bivol. It looked as if Bivol hadn’t trained well enough to get out of the way of Berridge’ lead left hands, because he was landing that shot almost at ill.
One big left hand from Berridge almost knocked Bivol down in round 3. The shot caused Bivol to go stumbling across the ring before he was able to regain his balance. It was fortunate for Bivol that he was facing a guy out of his class, because if this had been someone with talent and punching power like WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, then he would have been in trouble.
The loss for Berridge was his third in his last five fights and his fourth in his last seven fights. Berridge was beaten by Eleider Alvarez, Reece Papuri, Thomas Oosthuizen and Vasily Lepikhin.
The win for Bivol keeps him in position for a title shot against WBA 175lb champion Andre Ward. It remains to be seen whether Bivol will one day face Ward or someone else. Ward hasn’t said whether he’ll defend his WBA title or not.
Bivol looked good tonight against Berridge. He throws good combinations, and he appears to have excellent punching power. The negatives about Bivol is his lack of hand seed, and his punching power not being as good as some of the other top fighters in the light heavyweight division like Artur Beterbiev, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Joe Smith Jr., Andrzej Fonfara, Sullivan Barrera, and Sergey Kovalev. Those guys all appear to punch harder than Bivolv.
Other results on the Bivol vs. Berridge card:
Valery Tretyakov UD 10 Eugene Lagos
Sergey Kuzmin TKO 2 Vaclav Pejsar
Evgeny Smirnov draw 8 Nikita Kuznetsov
Grigory Nikolaychuk MD 10 Shuhrat Jalilov
Sergey Vorobiev TKO 1 Alexander Obukhovd
Grigory Vorobiev TKO 1 Ravil Zorbaev
Batuhan Gozgec TKO 3 Dmitry Lavrinenko
Zurab Kvitsiani KO 2 Vadim Sufiyanov