In the tradition of most great Russian works of art, but specifically the novel, the rivalry between light-heavyweights Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev has turned into a circuitous yet page-turning affair, with plenty of room for discussion and philosophical musings.
There is, despite the evidence of 24 rounds, still no clear end in sight with these two, nor any indication as to which of them is the real hero of the piece. In act one the hero appeared to be Beterbiev, of course, for he was the victor, whereas now, by the end of act two, we see Bivol, last night’s victor, with his hand raised.
In fact, reading the work produced by Bivol and Beterbiev these last few months has confounded as much as satisfied. While its greatness is undeniable, there is also a sense of the work being impenetrable, at least to the mainstream, and ultimately lacking something.
Some, to that, will say all it needs is a hero, or winner, and a bit of clarity. But it is more than that. In truth, so intricate and nuanced is the work of these two men, it often feels that we are in need of translation to fully understand exactly what is going on. This is true of the work they produce in individual rounds and it is also true of the fights as a whole, when twice now we have been left wondering what on earth happened at the conclusion of 12 scintillating rounds.
That, you might argue, is the mark of a competitive battle between two well-matched boxers, but this doesn’t make it any less confusing for those who prefer neater, gift-wrapped endings. In this instance, both times Beterbiev and Bivol have finished punching the living daylights out of each other we have had a spread of contrasting opinions and scorecards and have had to wait, with bated breath, to see how three men at ringside interpreted the classic they had just witnessed. In fight one that meant Beterbiev having his hand raised. Last night it was Bivol’s turn.
At no point, however, have we ever got a real sense that one is better than the other – not in October, nor even last night. Rather, as if to only confuse us further, we have now watched two fights between Bivol and Beterbiev which looked completely different from one another, serving to disarm us and make us question everything we thought we knew.
Some will call them plot twists, I suppose. Others, meanwhile, will point to these inconsistencies as signs of the pair’s brilliance and their ability to adapt. Either way, few will have expected Beterbiev to start as fast as he did last night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, nor for that matter enjoy the kind of success he did against Bivol in the early going. This, after all, was supposedly Bivol’s portion of the fight; the moment in which he was meant to feel fresh and at his most comfortable and dominant. Instead, for Beterbiev, every round he treated the same as round 11 from fight one. He treated it as though they were in short supply and that the end was in sight.
This was apparent early on and it continued, as a theme, for much of the first half of the fight. He landed heavy right hands in both round one and two, the kind unavailable to him until late in fight one, and he fought with a far greater assurance and sense of purpose than before. At times, he looked lost in fight one, caught somewhere between caution and overcommitting. Here, though, any indecision on Beterbiev’s part had been eradicated, perhaps by the manner in which he closed the show against Bivol in October.
This, for him, was merely a continuation, it seemed, whereas for Bivol, 24-1 (12), there was an element of surprise to it all. He was surprised not only by how quickly Beterbiev had settled but also how fast he had started. Suddenly, on account of this, Bivol found it more difficult to get his footing in the contest and land on Beterbiev the same combinations which were such a feature in the first half of their previous fight.
Worse, for Bivol, was the realisation that Beterbiev, this time around, was having success in his portion of the fight, while Beterbiev’s portion of the fight had yet to arrive. Talk about a portent of doom.
In rounds four and five particularly, Beterbiev, 21-1 (20), was fighting with all the conviction he once lacked, something strange to say of a man who has stopped so many opponents. But it is true nonetheless. In the fourth he was jabbing up and down intelligently, to Bivol’s head and to his body, and then in the fifth he was rushing him and roughing him up to such a degree Bivol, normally a study in composure, appeared flustered, agitated. At the round’s end, as he adjusted his trunks and turned to his corner, he took a deep breath; the first sign of emotion from a man typically stoic, hard to read.
It goes without saying, these were not the tropes we had expected to see on fight night. Already, in fact, our expectations had been upended, and in the case of Bivol, you now feared for him. In the sixth he again struggled to breathe with Beterbiev attacking him, and it was also noticeable how there was this time no opportunity for him to sit down on his combinations or make them count. Instead, whereas in fight one they were a deterrent, a warning to Beterbiev whenever he wanted to maraud forward, now they were being used only as a reaction to whatever move Beterbiev made first. Reaction rather than action, even when Bivol did explode with a combination, as he did in round six, there was not a lot of snap in the punches, as if Beterbiev had already drawn the sting from him. Later in that same round, for example, a big Bivol right hand got through on the inside, only for Beterbiev, its recipient, to eat it without so much as blinking. Not only that, he then returned the gesture, landing one of his own which caused Bivol to momentarily wobble. His shots, it seemed, made an impact Bivol’s did not and you did not need to feel them to know this. You simply had to listen. For they sounded different.
And yet, despite an inauspicious start and some stuttering, Bivol knew that for as long as their story was still being written there would be room for amendments and, yes, additional plot twists. Better yet, he knew that he had both the ability to adjust to Beterbiev’s adjustments and that Beterbiev’s adjustments – that is, his investment in starting faster – would come at a cost. In other words, the hope from Bivol’s side was that everything Beterbiev had put into the first six rounds would then be subtracted from him, in terms of both strength and energy, in the final six rounds.
There was logic to this theory and soon evidence, too. The seventh round was one full of promise for Bivol and then the eighth, a round in which the crowd rallied behind him following a snappy right hand, was arguably his best of the fight to that point. There were, of course, other rounds he had won, or at least ones hard to call, but it was this round, the eighth, that looked to signal a shift in the fight. It restored his confidence, if it had ever left, and it led to Bivol coming out reenergised for round nine and committing more to his punches. Suddenly his feet were quicker and his hands were starting to flow, just like the Bivol of old. Suddenly he was back to being the matador again and Beterbiev was back to being the bull: surrounded, discombobulated, moved around.
In round 10 Bivol was turning Beterbiev quite beautifully, with Beterbiev no longer so ferocious, and managed to land a gorgeous right hook to the body followed by a left hook to the head. These attacks were making Beterbiev have to reset and reorganise. They also made him think, maybe even doubt himself. After all, for all Beterbiev’s positive early work, Bivol showed no signs of slowing, much less succumbing. If anything, he grew in confidence for having survived that portion of the fight and was now buoyed to know the second half – apparently Beterbiev’s portion – would be one he would be able to navigate against a 40-year-old opponent who had by now shown a lot of his best stuff.
No longer, for Bivol, was there the fear of what was to come. That had already been met head on, he felt, and that is why he could afford to remain busy in the final three rounds. Even better, he fought these three rounds with an awareness of what impacted and ultimately influenced the result last time. To finish round 10, for instance, he threw a flurry of punches at Beterbiev, just because he could. These were, for all intents and purposes, “nothing” punches, but they served as an acknowledgement of what he needed to do this time; and what he perhaps didn’t do last time.
Most telling, as far as his progress, was round 11. In this round, the key Beterbiev round in fight one, Bivol appeared not only sprightly but nail Beterbiev with regularity whenever he leaned over his front foot in the rush to get to work. One right hand, which caught Beterbiev on the temple, demonstrated that Bivol was still sharp at this late stage and certainly sharp enough to now respond whenever Beterbiev attacked.
In that respect, the two fights had become very much separate entities, with the second markedly different from the first. Now, rather than hanging on, Bivol was thriving, doing solid work, and the crowd were chanting his name: “Bivol! Bivol! Bivol!” Now he was the one reducing a deficit and getting stronger late.
Then, just like that, Beterbiev landed a chopping right, Bivol budged ever so slightly, and there it was, yet another shift in the plot. As if previously dreaming, we now returned to familiar ground, with Beterbiev marching forward, enthused by this last-ditch success, and Bivol, cut by the left eye, all of a sudden rattled and loose.
Yes, after all that it ended up evoking and indeed resembling fight one, almost as if both, in swapping parts, had all along been deliberately trying to confuse us; make sure we were paying attention. Like the first fight, too, we would now have to wait for the judges to translate for us what we had just watched and put our entire reading of it in their hands.
These hands, while not always capable, did at least manage to find three scorecards more or less in communication with each other: 114-114, 116-112, 115-113. This time they went the way of Dmitry Bivol, not Artur Beterbiev, and yet, with the score now 1-1, still we are no closer to understanding which of the two is the best light-heavyweight in the world. For that we will likely need another fight – a third act, if you will – and we will need the kind of victory, for one or the other, which acts as the definitive translation of this complex but compelling Russian classic.
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