Artur Beterbiev did some light work shadowboxing with the leaves today, preparing for his fight against Dmitry Bivol on October 12th.
Inside Work: Beterbiev’s Key to Victory
During his leave workout, Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs) showed off the kind of inside work that he’s going to be attempting to use against WBA light heavyweight champion Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs) in their headliner on DAZN at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Bivol, the favorite, will try to keep the action on the outside to limit the heavy shots that the knockout artist Beterbiev will throw.
It’s going to be hard for Bivol to keep the IBF, WBC, and WBO 175-lb champion Beterbiev off him without moving nonstop for three minutes of every round and holding a lot. Bivol might come unglued from Beterbiev’s pressure in this fight and wind up suffering his first career loss.
The 33-year-old Bivol didn’t look confident against his last opponent, Malik Zinad, and had been hurt in his previous fight against Lyndon Arthur last December in Riyadh.
Beterbiev’s Seek-And-Destroy Mindset
Bivol is a good puncher, too, with better hand speed than Beterbiev, but he doesn’t possess the same power. Beterbiev is on another level in the power department, and his seek-and-destroy mindset is focused only on achieving a knockout. He will be applying nonstop pressure on Bivol, forcing him to fight harder than he has in a long time.
Bivol’s last five fights have come against these fighters:
– Malik Zinad
– Lyndon Arthur
– Gilberto ‘Zurdo’ Ramirez
– Canelo Alvarez
– Umar Salamov
Bivol’s last tough fight against a pressure fighter was three years ago, in May 2021, against Craig Richards. He had a lot of problems in that match. Bivol won a twelve-round unanimous decision by the scores 118–110, 115–113, and 115–114. The last two were the most accurate ones.
Beterbiev is coming off a seventh-round knockout win over former super middleweight champion Callum Smith last January, and he looked as good as ever in that fight.
He destroyed a guy who had only lost once in his career, losing to Canelo Alvarez by a twelve-round unanimous decision in 2020. Beterbiev walked through Smith’s power shots to knock him out in the seventh.
Read the full article here
