Light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev holds the IBF, WBC, and WBO titles and is the lineal light-heavyweight champion. He has fought twenty times as a professional, winning all twenty matches. He has won by knockout twenty times.
If you are not a math person, that is a knockout rate of 100%. Watching Beterbiev use great footwork and skill to create openings to land his sledgehammer-like punches is similar to Ivan Drago in Rocky IV.
Beterbiev’s opponent on Saturday, Callum Smith, is a former world champion who has been in the ring against world-class competition. He had lost just once as a pro, to Canelo Alvarez, and never gotten knocked down as an amateur or a professional.
When he stepped in the ring with Artur Beterbiev, none of Callum Smith’s previous experience mattered. Smith had a couple of good moments, but once Beterbiev landed a few heavy shots and bloodied Smith towards the end of the third round, it was a matter of when the fight would end, not if. Smith finally succumbed to the Beterbiev onslaught in the seventh round, going down twice following a barrage of heavy punches. The sequence was an illustration of Beterbiev’s prowess at finishing fights.
In the seventh round, Beterbiev was like a shark who smelled blood in the water. Just under a minute into the round, Beterbiev countered an attempt at a left hand from Smith with a staggering short right hook, which caused Smith to fall forward. Two more short right hooks from Beterbiev got Smith trapped in his corner, where Beterbiev followed up with a straight right hand between Smith’s guard that propelled Callum back into the ropes.
Smith’s trainer, Buddy McGirt, had cautioned Smith about avoiding this predicament between rounds just minutes earlier. Smith went into a defensive mindset, flailing around trying not to get hit with another shot– but Beterbiev lands a powerful three-punch combination; this doubles Smith over and has him looking for a clinch. A thudding downward right-handed blow followed by a left hook from Beterbiev straightens Smith up against the ropes, where his legs give out, and Callum Smith falls onto the canvas for the first time in his career.
Callum Smith valiantly answered referee Michael Griffin’s ten-count at eight, but that only gave Beterbiev time to catch his breath and determine how to end the fight. Beterbiev darted across the ring, landing a textbook 1-2 combination before Smith could respond and get his hands back up in a proper defensive position. Smith instantly backpedals to the ropes once he feels Beterbiev’s power, taking another heavy right hand and heavy left hand on his way there.
Callum evades a punch and misses with an instinctive left hook, which Beterbiev counters with a short, powerful right-handed hook. Smith goes into self-preservation mode and successfully avoids the assault of punches for a few seconds– until Beterbiev pierces his guard once more with a straight right hand.
Beterbiev closes the show by landing a picture-perfect left uppercut, his first uppercut of the entire sequence, sending Callum Smith to the ground for the second time in what must have been the longest thirty seconds of his career. Mercifully, veteran trainer Buddy McGirt came out of Smith’s corner and into the ring as the referee administered his second ten-count, ending the fight and saving Smith from absorbing more of Beterbiev’s blows.
Though he has had just twenty fights as a professional, Beterbiev will turn 39 years old on January 21st. Beterbiev has been relatively inactive during his career because of various injuries, including a knee injury, shoulder injury, rib injury, and recently, a jaw infection stemming from a dental surgery. Beterbiev was also involved in a legal dispute with his former trainer, Yvon Michel, which kept him out of the ring before being resolved.
Though he has just twenty pro fights, Beterbiev is no novice in the ring. He had a stellar record as an amateur, compiling a reported 295-5 mark. The current light heavyweight champion won multiple medals as an amateur in the European Championships and World Championships. He fought current heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk three times as an amateur. Beterbiev won the first match over Usyk and knocked him down in the second, though Beterbiev lost the final two matchups. Usyk has stated that Artur Beterbiev was the toughest amateur opponent he faced.
As Callum Smith can attest, recent inactivity has done nothing to diminish the venom in Beterbiev’s punches. Before Beterbiev’s last fight, his promoter, Bob Arum, told BoxingScene.com, “Age is not a relevant factor with Beterbiev. If you’re 39 and you’ve had 40 or 50 fights, age matters. If you’re 39 and you’ve had 19 fights, you know, in effect your body is that of a younger guy. It’s really wear and tear on the body. So, you saw [George] Foreman fought way past 45 because he had 10 years where he didn’t fight at all. It’s like a car. You can have a car, an older car, but if you don’t use it very much, it lasts longer.”
Beterbiev’s twenty-first fight will hopefully be his biggest yet. The best fight boxing can offer, almost inarguably, is Artur Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KO) vs. Dmitry Bivol (22-0, 11 KO) for the undisputed light heavyweight championship. Beterbiev, with his prolific power, taking on Bivol, with his technical mastery, for all of the belts in the 175-pound weight class, has all the elements of a great fight.
The winner would become the light heavyweight division’s first undisputed champion in the four-belt era. The fight should be more than just the classic boxer vs. puncher matchup, as Beterbiev is a skilled boxer while Bivol has solid punching power.
Bivol retained his WBA championship against Lyndon Arthur on December 23rd, successfully defending his championship for the eleventh consecutive time.
Bivol has won his last nine fights by decision, with his most recent knockout victory coming in March 2018 against Sullivan Barrera. Bivol has moved up the rankings in pound-for-pound lists during his streak of title defenses, defeating top-level fighters, including Canelo Alvarez and Gilberto Ramirez.
A Beterbiev-Bivol fight will likely happen this summer after Ramadan, which concludes in the second week of April this year. Beterbiev, a Muslim, observes Ramadan. Saudi Arabia will host the massive fight in all likelihood. Bivol’s last fight was in Riyadh.
Beterbiev vs. Bivol is the most anticipated fight the 175-pound division has had since Andre Ward took on Sergey Kovalev for the first time in 2016.
When Beterbiev vs. Bivol takes place, the question that will likely define the fight is whether Beterbiev will respect Bivol’s combination of timing, tactics, and punching power enough to stop him from coming forward at will. Beterbiev is not invincible. He has gotten hit cleanly.
He has gotten knocked down as a professional. But Beterbiev seems unstoppable at his best. Dmitry Bivol would be the toughest test Beterbiev has had as a pro. Bivol made Canelo Alvarez look mortal in a boxing ring like only Floyd Mayweather Jr. has before.
Like Beterbiev, when Bivol has everything working, he seems unstoppable. But for all that Bivol brings to the table, twenty knockouts in twenty fights speaks for itself. As Mike Tyson famously said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched In the face.”
Can Artur Beterbiev be stopped? Does Dmitry Bivol have what it takes to pull the proverbial sword from the stone and block Beterbiev’s barrage of punches? I can’t wait to find out.