Dmitry Bivol’s promoter, Eddie Hearn, is still insisting that he won the fight last Saturday against Artur Beterbiev and that he should be the undisputed light heavyweight champion today.
If Hearn gets his way, Bivol will get another opportunity to fight the unified champion Beterbiev for his titles. We don’t want Bivol to fail to engage like last time, lose, and then have Hearn complain that he won and make a fuss about wanting another rematch. Fans don’t want to see endless rematches.
Hearn wants a rematch for his beaten fighter, Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs), but that’s out of his hands.
His Excellency Turki Alalshikh will have to decide if he wants Bivol to challenge undisputed champion Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) next or have him get in line to earn the shot by defeating one of the go-getters, David Benavidez, David Morrell or Joshua Buatsi.
Bivol fought well in the first four rounds but didn’t do much in the final eight rounds. There were very few punches landed by either fighter during rounds one through four. Hearn says he had Bivol winning either four of the first five or all the rounds.
That was obviously not possible because there wasn’t enough offense from Bivol to win more than two. The punch stats were very close, but Beterbievs shots were a lot harder.
“I’m not going to go back into my shell. ‘I’m getting a bit of stick about my emotions in the fight.’ I’m doubling down. We won the fight, and we want a rematch,” said Eddie Hearn to Matchroom Boxing, insisting that his fighter Dmitry Bivol deserved the win against Artur Beterbiev, and he’s now demanding a rematch.
“The 116-112 scorecard rattled me, and I thought it was unacceptable. I was baffled about how three judges, not one of them gave Dmitry Bivol that fight when you look at the general reaction. I truly believe Dmitry Bivol deserves to be the undisputed champion.”
Hearn shouldn’t have been rattled by the 116-112 score because it was obvious that Beterbiev took over the fight in the last six rounds. Bivol wasn’t doing anything other than using his Sugar Ray Leonard style, which he copied from Ray’s fight against Marvin Hagler. That fight was considered controversial by many fans who had seen it years ago.
“I thought Bivol boxed incredibly well. He did give away some rounds in the back end of the fight. He should have been more active in those rounds. For me, Dmitry Bivol was the winner. If you really know your boxing, you know what Dmitry Bivol was doing in that fight.
“If you look at the majority of that fight, he was brilliant. Artur threw so many shots, but how many did he land clean? Where I was sitting three rows back, they all gave it to Dmitry Bivol.
“Beterbiev landed a whole bunch of punches later on in the fight. He hardly landed any in the early part of the fight. I felt after four or five rounds, it was either a clean sweep or I gave Beterbiev one round,” said Hearn.
Again, neither fighter landed a lot of punches in the first half of the fight, but Beterbiev was the one connecting with the harder punches by far. You could hear Beterbiev’s shots when they’d land, and they made a lot of noise.
“That particular judge didn’t get it right,” said Hearn about the judge that scored it 116-112 for Beterbiev. “I had it 8-4 [for Bivol]. 7-5 being really impartial. From where I was sitting, six feet from the ring, I felt Dmitry Bivol was in control of the fight for the majority of the fight,” said Hearn.
The judge that scored it 116-112 obviously saw Beterbiev dominating the second half, as many did, and he won at least two of the first six rounds. It’s easy to come to that identical score because Bivol did nothing in the second of the fight. He didn’t win the first six rounds. At best, Bivol won three of the first six and then caved in the last six.
Read the full article here
