I assume I am on an island here. Following the sensational sequel of Artur Beterbiev’s majority decision win over Dmitry Bivol, in which Bivol exacted revenge by identical scores to begin his stint as the undisputed light heavyweight champion, all the talk is about a trilogy fight. Bivol won, but it was a close-run thing. Another fight is needed for Bivol or Beterbiev to establish clear superiority.
I think it’s too late. Beterbiev turned 40 in January. Though he fought well in this rematch, throwing six more punches than the first time around (688 to 682) and having his moments, he landed at a worse percentage (17.6 per cent to 20.1 per cent in the first fight). Perhaps more tellingly, Beterbiev faded slightly in the championship rounds, whereas he surged to dominate them in the first fight. It looked to me that Beterbiev timed his surge earlier in the rematch, winning a string of rounds in the middle of the fight rather than the end – maybe because he knew he couldn’t trust his gas tank in the late rounds.
Beterbiev also took something of a beating in the rematch. This is a thing that is odd to say about a fighter so accustomed to doling out the beatings, but it’s true. Per CompuBox, Bivol landed 170 punches on Beterbiev, a record high for the former champion’s opponents. Eighty-five of those shots were power punches, 42 of them body shots. Many of them landed clean and square, marking and bruising Beterbiev’s face more than in any fight since his win over Marcus Browne.
The point is, I can’t imagine how Beterbiev will perform better in a trilogy fight than in this rematch. He will continue to age, his body will be more prone to injury than ever, and his punch resistance will begin to fade. In my prediction for the rematch, I wrote that I thought Beterbiev was the better fighter but that his age would impede his endurance and chin just enough for Bivol to win a decision. Bivol’s sensational in-and-out footwork, newly polished head movement and fast, sharp counter shots played the biggest role in the fight, but I don’t think you’ll find many people arguing that he fought a peak Beterbiev.
After the fight, Beterbiev acted somewhat out of character. He behaved coldly to Bivol throughout the buildup, and even in the seconds after their first fight, the time in which rivals typically forge a friendship, he allowed only a firm touch of the gloves as acknowledgment to his opponent. This time, Beterbiev hugged Bivol. When Bivol’s decision victory was read, Beterbiev poked his tongue out between his lips briefly – an ah, well kind of expression – then grinned.
Minutes later, when asked about a trilogy, he told DAZN broadcaster and interviewer Chris Mannix: “Actually, I didn’t want the second fight. It wasn’t my choice. But, no problem, we’re going to do a third fight.”
I’m not sure that’s in Beterbiev’s, or the public’s, best interests. Beterbiev has enjoyed a turn as undisputed light heavyweight champ; he’s endured a boatload of injuries; most fighters are done at the elite level by 35, much less 40. In a trilogy bout, the likeliest scenario is that Bivol wins more comfortably against a faded Beterbiev, in shades of Saul “Canelo” Alvarez-Gennadiy Golovkin III. A third fight also won’t definitively answer the question of who the superior fighter is (though we’ll all have our opinions). We would be weighing a post-prime Beterbiev against a still-prime Bivol.
So let’s move on. Because of the ages of both men and the aesthetic beauty of their fights, it’s not really necessary to determine who is better – the closeness of their first two bouts means this era at 175lbs will be forever defined by both of them. Like Canelo and Golovkin, neither could separate themselves emphatically across 24 rounds, and a third fight with one fighter declining will produce diminishing returns.
At 34, Bivol seems still to be in his prime. He has time to begin a rivalry with another fighter, and that fighter is David Benavidez. He would be champing at the bit to fight Bivol. He has ascended to the pound-for-pound list, too, after a superb string of wins over Caleb Plant, Demetrius Andrade, Oleksandr Gvozdyk and David Morrell. Immensely brave though he was in a win over Joshua Buatsi early on the Beterbiev-Bivol card, Callum Smith fighting Benavidez would prove nothing.
Smith has lost convincingly each of the two times he fought a world-beating opponent. Benavidez is younger, fresher, tougher, likely more skillful and has yet to touch his ceiling.
Benavidez-Bivol, to me, is the best fight that can be made at 175lbs. Some may believe that Bivol is the much slicker, more skillful fighter, but he and Benavidez are actually within a single point of each other on the plus-minus leaderboard, with Bivol at plus-16.7 and Benavidez at plus-16. Benavidez has the chin to walk through Bivol’s offense. Though he lacks Beterbiev’s concussive power, his footwork and combinations produce their own kind of suffocating pressure. That might just be the key to dissecting Bivol’s immaculate technical boxing.
It could be a great fight. Just as importantly, it’s a fight that has a chance of revealing something new and compelling about one of the fighters. While Beterbiev-Bivol III won’t show which fighter was better in his prime, Bivol-Benavidez is Benavidez’s chance to prove that he is a true world-beater – and Bivol could add to his legacy by defending his championship against a younger foe atop the list of challengers.
Bivol-Beterbiev III is the obvious pick for the next big fight at 175lbs. But it also poses the danger of ending the rivalry on a sour note, not an uncommon occurrence in boxing. Canelo-Golovkin, Israel Vazquez-Rafael Marquez and Ray Leonard-Roberto Duran were thrilling rivalries, but all included an unnecessary final chapter. Beterbiev-Bivol worked wonderfully as a two-fight series, and with a fresh challenger in Benavidez waiting in the wings, boxing would be foolish to risk letting a third installment spoil the end of the saga. Sentimentality is an emotion best kept to sports that do not involve punches to the head.
Owen Lewis is a former intern at Defector media and writes and edits for BoxingScene. His beats are tennis, boxing, books, travel and anything else that satisfies his meager attention span. He is on Bluesky.
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