By Jeff Aranow: WBA World light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol’s coming out party will be taking place this Saturday night in his first title defense against Trent Broadhurst (20-1, 12 KOs) on November 4 on HBO Boxing After Dark from the Salle Medecin, Monte Carlo. The start time for the Bivol (11-0, 9 KOs) vs. Broadhurst fight is at 5:45 p.m. ET/PT.
HBO deciding to televise the 26-year-old Bivol’s fight against Broadhurst suggests that they believe that the heavy-handed Russian has the potential to become a name in the 175 lb. division. We’ll have to see if that’s the case. Bivol will have to earn fame the hard way in steadily winning over a number of years, because there aren’t any big names for him to fight for the time being.
Andre “SOG” Ward retired recently, and that was a guy that Bivol would have been looking to fight sooner or later. With Ward gone, Bivol will be looking to fight Sergey Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson, Artur Beterbiev, Sullivan Barrera and Oleksandr Gvozdyk. Those are going to be tough outs for Bivol, but the fights will be exciting to watch.
If Bivol is able to prove himself as the best at 175, HBO could have another Gennady “GGG” Golovkin on their hands. The good thing about HBO televising Bivol’s fights now is they catching him while he’s still young before he’s hit the prime of his career. If Bivol is able to clean out the division, HBO will have a star on their hands, and it would out great for their network. HBO already has Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez signed, and fighting on their network. But they need new blood like Bivol to keep the boxing fans tuning in to their network to watch the sport.
If Bivol defeats Broadhurst on Saturday night, then his next defense will be against his mandatory challenger Sullivan Barrera (20-1, 14 KOs). That’ll be a real good test for Bivol. Barrera has a fight scheduled next month against Felix Valera (15-1, 13 KOs) on November 25 on the undercard of the Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev vs. Vyacheslav Shabranskyy card on HBO Boxing from Madison Square Garden, in New York.
Barrera should win that fight, but you never know. Barrera was beaten by Andre Ward last year by a 12 round unanimous decision on March 26 in Oakland, California. Barrera bounced back from those defeats to defeat Shabranskyy by a 7th round knockout on December 16 last year, and then he beat Paul Parker and Joe Smith Jr. It was pretty impressive the way Barrera defeated Smith Jr. and Shabranskyy. Barrera clearly was a cut above those two fighters in the talent and boxing skills department.
“I must do mandatory defense for WBA for next fight,” said Bivol. “Barrera is ranked second and I want the fight with the best guys in the WBA rankings, so I want to fight him next. I watched Barrera’s fights with Shabranskyy, Andre Ward and Joe Smith Jr. He is good boxer. He has good speed. Good Skills. Good moves. I want to fight with the best fighters.”
Bivol and Barrera will face each other in 2018 as long as both guys keep winning. If Bivol can get past Barrera, that’ll say a lot about how good he is Bivol has impressed recently with knockout wins over these fighters:
• Cedric Agnew
• Samuel Clarkson
• Robert Berridge
• Yevgeni Makhteinko
• Felix Valera
• Cleiton Conceicao
It should be fun to see how Barrera does against Valera, considering that’s a fighter that Bivol beat by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision last year on May 21.