By Allan Fox: Undefeated light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) weighed in successfully on Thursday in coming in at 174.2 pounds for his match against Isidro Pietro (26-1-3, 22 KOs) on Friday night at the Lac Leamy Casino in Gatineau, Quebec.
By Jim Dower: Light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) will be fighting this Friday night on December 23 against #7 WBO Isidro Ranoni Prieto (26-1-3, 22 KO) at the Casino du Lac-Leamy in Gatineau. The highly ranked Beterbiev is trying not to look past Prieto, but it’s hard not to.
Beterbiev, 31, could be fighting the winner of the rematch between IBF/WBA/WBO 175lb champion Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev. The winner of the fight will need to make a mandatory defense of their IBF title, and Beterbiev is the top guy in the rankings for the winner.
By Allan Fox: #2 IBF Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) will reportedly be fighting on February 24 at the Videotron Center to become the mandatory challenger to newly crowned IBF light heavyweight champion Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs). Beterbiev’s opponent is still yet to be determined. International Boxing Federation president Lindsey Tucker contacted Beterbiev’s promoter Yvon Michel on Monday to let him know about the news.
The IBF will look to see if #3 IBF Erick Skoglund (25-0, 11 KOs) and his promoters at Sauerland Events are interested in taking the fight with Beterbiev. If not, then the IBF will move down list of top contenders until they get one.
By Jaime Ortega: The fight of the year was controversial, but not necessarily robbery. I witness the fight live on ringside at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Andre Ward’s first 4 rounds were not stellar and cost him an early knockdown – he was to not get knocked out. After the six round, Ward started to pick up the pace and landed shots on Sergey Kovalev’s body; many of the shots that landed on Kovalev’s body hit the elbow and not the target.
Ward shifted to target the body instead of the head because he had a hard time stopping Kovalev’s counter left. As I had mentioned on my previous article, Kovalev’s reach is enough to keep Ward at distance. Every time Ward launched a quick jab to catch the Russian’s face, Kovalev extended his left arm to counter him back – therefore, Ward ran into Kovalev’s left often. Ward figured out that Kovalev’s left was a problem and changed his strategy later on the rounds.
By Allan Fox: Unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) is on the verge of cleaning out the 160lb division once he beats Daniel Jacobs, Billy Joe Saunders and Saul Canelo Alvarez.
Golovkin may not need to defeat Saunders, because he’ll likely be eliminated in early 2017 once he fights the young 26-year-old Canelo Alvarez in a fight that will almost surely wind up on HBO pay-per-view in the United States.
By Allan Fox: In a disappointing match-up, unbeaten light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev will be facing fringe contender Isidro Prieto in a 12 round fight on December 23 at the Lac Leamy Casino in Quebec, Canada. This is the second fight for the 31-year-old Beterbiev since coming off of a year layoff from a shoulder injury. Beterbiev fought last June in defeating Ezequiel Osvaldo Maderna (24-3, 16 KOs) by a 4th round knockout.
That was a decent fight for Beterbiev, because he was coming off of a year out of the ring, so you couldn’t expect much from him. However, Beterbiev is now heading into another long spell before he fights Prieto on December 23. By the time Beterbiev fights him, he’ll have been out of the ring for six months. That’s not good. Beterbiev needs to be busy, and he’s not unfortunately.
By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) has wisely given up on the idea of him fighting in the 2016 Olympics. The 31-year-old Beterbiev would have had to complete in a qualifying process to earn the right in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
It would have been a process that would have taken time away from Beterbiev’s pro career, and the timing would have been really bad, given that he’s coming off a year-long layoff due to a shoulder injury.
By Dan Ambrose: Last Saturday night’s exciting match between WBC super featherweight champion Francisco Vargas (23-0-2, 17 KOs) and former two division world champion Orlando Salido (43-13-4, 30 KOs) averaged an impressive 833,000 viewers with a peak of 954,000 viewers on HBO’s Boxing After Dark, according to Dan Rafael.
The judges scored the fight a 12 round draw by scoring it 115-113 for Vargas, 114-114, and 114-114. It was hard not to see Salido as the better fighter, as he was landing the harder shots and pushing the fight for the entire 12 rounds.
By Jeff Aranow: It looks like unbeaten light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) will be taking part in the Rio Olympics this summer. Beterbiev, 31, Tweeted that he’ll be returning to the pros after the Olympics. Beterbiev won last Saturday night in his 10th pro fight in defeating Ezequiel “El Olimpico” Maderna (23-3, 15 KOs) by a 4th round knockout at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Beterbiev had been out of the ring for a year since June of 2015 due to a shoulder problem. If Beterbiev is going to spend this summer taking part in the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, then it’s possible he might be out of action until later this year. The Olympics will take time. It’s unknown which country Beterbiev will compete for in the summer Olympics in Rio.
By Jeff Aranow: Undefeated light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (10-0, 10 KOs) should be back in the ring in September against hopefully a better opponent than the one he fought last night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Beterbiev destroyed a very timid-looking Ezequiel “El Olimpico” Maderna (23-3, 15 KOs) in four rounds.
Maderna came in two pounds over the limit during Friday’s weigh-in. That should have been a tip off that things weren’t going to go smoothly for the Argentinian fighter. What’s hard to understand is that Maderna was coming up in weight from super middleweight and yet he still came in over the limit.