The Bivol-Beterbiev II pay-per-view running diary, Part II

Picking up where we left off in Part I… we have Nigel Collins, Bill Dettloff, David Kushin, Jeff Edelstein, and my dog Otis in attendance at the palatial Raskin estate, we just dug into some vegan apple pie, Vergil Ortiz’s decision win over Israil Madrimov just concluded, and four fights remain on the nine-fight “Last Crescendo” broadcast…

3:17pm: The opening bell rings for the middleweight fight between Carlos Adames and Hamzah Sheeraz, and we’re a respectable 42 minutes behind schedule. As long as there isn’t an hour-long supercut of everyone saying “His Excellency” planned for later in the broadcast, I’m starting to believe this really will end before 8pm.

3:30: The fight is dreadful. Neither man seems inclined to take any chances. The conversation turns to Bobby Czyz, which soon gives way to Nigel telling stories about crossing paths with mobsters. I’ll let you readers connect the dots there.

3:45: I open up my second Surfside Peach Tea & Vodka and start guzzling. It’s the only way I’m making it through Adames-Sheeraz.

4:01: We’ve reached round 12, and everyone — from Sheeraz’s cornermen, to the paid commentators, the unpaid analysts in my living room, to me because I have Sheeraz on my parlay — is pleading for Sheeraz to open up and go for it, since he seems to be narrowly behind. But he simply refuses to fight with urgency. The fight ends, and I presume my parlay is toast.

4:06: His gloves and wraps off, Sheeraz is looking at his left hand as if he broke it — which would help explain why he fought as passively as he did. Moments later, the decision is in: 115-114 Sheeraz (yikes), 118-110 Adames (different kind of yikes), and 114-114. I wasn’t scoring carefully, can’t really say how reasonable or unreasonable a draw is here. I know neither man fought well enough to complain too loudly. And I know my parlay is still alive! A draw means that leg is avoided, so my odds are reduced from +4244 to +3224, and my dollar and David’s dollar live to sweat another bout.

4:10: Jeff has to get going soon, as he has a friend’s retirement party to attend. He has no idea how well dressed he’s expected to be for this thing. Discussion ensues: If wearing jeans and a blazer, should the button-down shirt under the blazer be tucked or untucked? (Opinions welcome in the comments section below.)

4:14: Late sub Josh Padley is making his ring walk, and there still appear to be a depressingly high number of empty seats.

4:21: As Shakur Stevenson vs. Padley begins (46 minutes behind schedule), we’re all focused on Padley’s full-back tattoo, which is obviously of two people boxing, but it’s tough to tell who they are. Thank goodness for the internet. A simple search leads us to Padley’s Facebook page and a well-lit still of the back-tat, and it appears that it’s Mike Tyson punching Zeus (the Greek god, not Tom “Tiny” Lister’s character from No Holds Barred who main-evented SummerSlam ’89). Interesting fight. No, not Stevenson-Padley. Tyson-Zeus. If Tyson doesn’t get him out of there in the first two rounds, Mike’s in trouble. Those thunderbolts are no joke.

4:27: Shawn Porter — who’s been in and out of the ringside commentary crew all day — and Sergio Mora start arguing about whether Stevenson is a mongoose or a cheetah. Either way, Padley has no prayer.

4:29: Jeff heads out after round two, and Otis promptly takes his warm seat on the couch and falls asleep.

4:40: Shakur lands a massive left hand just before the bell to end round five, and I have no idea how the impressively game Padley is taking some of these shots without blinking. Meanwhile, the commentators keep saying Padley took the fight on two days’ notice, even using the word “literally” at one point, when in actuality he took the fight on four days’ notice. Cool. So it seems the epidemic of “alternative facts” (a.k.a. “lies”) has invaded boxing.

4:48: Nobody really expected Padley to last this long, but here we are in round seven, and Stevenson appears to hurt his left hand landing a punch. I’m not terribly concerned, but it would be a brutal way to lose my parlay if the one automatic pick on the card had to surrender with a broken hand.

4:55: Despite the injured hand, Stevenson remains dominant, and he drops Padley with a body shot in round nine. Moments later, Shakur scores another knockdown, and this time gets away with landing a punch while Padley is down. A straight left to the belly floors Padley a third time just before the bell, and though he beats the count, his corner appropriately throws in the towel.

5:06: Between fights, we’re all mesmerized by, and trying to make sense of, Porter’s suit jacket. The left side ends just below his hip, as it’s supposed to. The right side goes down to the top of his knee. I’m so confused. Oh, good, here comes the AI boxing judge, hopefully it’s here to explain Porter’s jacket to me.

5:09: A video starts making its way around social media of Turki Alalshikh telling Sheeraz late in his fight with Adames that he’s down by two points. I’m just going to go have another slice of cheese-less pizza (or “tomato pie” as the locals call it). This fight card has spanned lunch and dessert, now we’re hitting dinner. This is how all PPVs should be.

5:11: Michael Buffer replaces Treiber for the final two fights. I’m a big fan of Buffer — very nice guy the one time I interviewed him, good social media follow, he roots for all the correct sports teams. But I’m also bitterly jealous of his station in life, getting to collect big paychecks and only announce the last fight or two. Note to my editors: For my next column, you guys write it, and you can leave the last couple of paragraphs to me.

5:12: Heavyweight Martin Bakole, who unlike Padley actually did take his fight against Joseph Parker on two days’ notice when Daniel Dubois fell ill, enters the ring with the flag of Congo wrapped around him in such a way that Dettloff is inspired to refer to it as a “muumuu.” He weighed in at 310 pounds. No excuses (as you should know, those words invariably mean an excuse is coming), but I included Bakole as the sixth leg in my parlay before he had weighed in.

5:19: The opening bell for Parker-Bakole rings, 39 minutes behind schedule. Really impressive job keeping this thing on track and moving briskly from fight to fight.

5:21: You know what isn’t moving briskly? Bakole’s right hand. Two minutes into the opening round, he throws one and Parker is clear of it by about two feet by the time it arrives at its destination.

5:25: Things are heating up in round two, as Parker lands a hellacious right hand but Bakole barely blinks. Is Parker intimidated by his opponent’s toughness? He doesn’t have time to be. Seconds later, a right hand lands on the top of Bakole’s head, sending him sprawling to the canvas on a delayed reaction, clearly discombobulated. He gets up off-balance, and his corner waves it off at just 2:17 of the second round. The parlay had a good run, but it has come to rest, like so many other seven-leggers, in the parlay graveyard.

5:28: We watch the replay of the knockout, and Nigel says, “He just grazed his hair.” Comparisons are drawn to Mike Tyson vs. Bruce Seldon. I think it was a legit KO, one of those weird equilibrium shots, probably made more effective by Bakole not being in fighting shape at all. Maybe it was a little fluky. Maybe it was a bad idea for Bakole to take a (presumably enormous) paycheck on such short notice. Or maybe we should just assume that when Bill Simmons gets overly excited about a boxer off a single fight, it says more about the pernicious disease of casual-fan-itis than it does the boxer in question.

5:37: On the broadcast, they say the main event ring walks are starting in 10 minutes. By god. Is this thing — gulp! — running ahead of schedule?

5:38: Ade Oladipo is conducting an absolute rump-smoocher of an interview with Turki, and I don’t even care! The show is ahead of schedule. This isn’t dragging anything out. Smooch away.

5:51: Buffer: “Let’s get this party started!!” (Dude. We got this party started almost 7½ hours ago. Don’t know where you’ve been.)

5:55: Both main event fighters — light heavyweight champ Artur Beterbiev and challenger Dmitry Bivol — are in the ring, and here comes Saudi Arabia’s national anthem, and as I remind everyone before it begins, it’s perhaps the shortest national anthem I’ve ever heard. Indeed, in and out in 30 seconds, no additional anthems — I love the pacing of this fight card.

5:56: Nigel observes that Bivol’s eyes are looking puffy underneath during the introductions, and he’s right. Very odd.

6:00: Grisham’s final words before the opening bell, which I shall present without snarky comment (but you may infer your own snark): “This fight has been labeled ‘The Last Crescendo,’ and rightfully so.”

6:01: Opening bell! Literally one minute behind schedule! This is how you run a marathon boxing card, dammit!

6:14: In round four, as Beterbiev is wrapping up his second consecutive clear-cut round (pulling even to 2-2 on my scorecard), Mora observes, “It’s not looking good if Bivol’s already falling behind.” Whether Bivol is or is not behind at this point, “The Latin Snake” captures what we’re all thinking, given that Bivol faded down the stretch of their first fight, after having seemingly built a lead.

6:17: Between rounds four and five, with my parlay gone and thus no active wagers to sweat, I’m trying to throw a few bucks on Beterbiev by KO/TKO/DQ at +220, but the DraftKings app keeps taking its sweet time processing the bet, only to reject it because the odds have allegedly changed while it was taking its sweet time. Surely what’s actually happening is that someone at DraftKings knows I’m the sharpest boxing bettor around and they’re scared to take my action. (Which inadvertently worked out well for me.)

6:19: Beterbiev is really breaking through in the fifth, visibly moving Bivol with his punches. The champ is looking better than he did at any point in their first fight, and Bivol seems to have no answers.

6:26: Grisham notes, “I don’t think they’ve clinched once.” Yeah, it’s been that kind of fight. Not the most bone-crunching action you’ll ever see, but nicely paced, fought at a high skill level, and possibly without a single clinch.

6:32: Finally, the boxers fall into a clinch just as the bell rings to end round eight. And something unexpected is happening in the fight. Bivol is surging. He won the last two rounds on my scorecard after trailing 58-56 at the halfway mark, pulling even in the fight. This is a truly impressive seizure of momentum against an opponent who usually doesn’t relinquish that momentum once he’s claimed it.

6:34: Early in the ninth, Bivol lets fly a sick body-head combination, looking both spectacularly sharp and far fresher than a fighter is supposed to in the last third of a tough bout. He lands a 1-2, utilizes excellent footwork to pop right out of the way, then lands another 1-2 and pops away again.

6:42: Beterbiev has no answers, but he’s still trying in round 11 — only to walk into a sizzling right uppercut from Bivol. The ex-titlist scores with a tremendous combination near the end of the 11th, cementing his fifth straight round on my card.

6:46: The Riyadh crowd chants “Bi-vol! Bi-vol!” in round 12. But Beterbiev is rallying in the final minute, scoring with a heavy right hand, and convincing Bivol to hold with 30 seconds left on the clock. Beterbiev wins the round, but Bivol takes the fight on my scorecard, 115-113.

6:49: As we await the decision, I initiate a discussion about how David Benavidez would fare against whoever gets the nod, opining that I’d narrowly favor Benavidez over either man right now. Of course, if Bivol wins or the fight is declared a draw, the conversation is probably moot because one presumes Bivol-Beterbiev III would be coming first.

6:51: No bad scorecards. 114-114, 116-112 Bivol, and 115-113 Bivol, all within one round of how I had it. As Mannix pulls Bivol in for his postfight interview, we observe that his eyes are less puffy underneath now than they were before the fight. I am left questioning everything I think I know about boxing.

6:59: After Beterbiev’s postfight interview, in which he says he doesn’t want to comment on the scoring or the outcome but offers congratulations to Bivol, implying that he doesn’t agree with the decision, Kushin describes Beterbiev as a “sore good sport.”

7:05: And just like that, all my guests are gone faster than you can say “last crescendo,” and I have plenty of leftover vegan apple pie to enjoy in the days ahead. Plus, I have my whole Saturday night still ahead of me, to do with whatever I choose.

7:22: Smash-cut to Raskin asleep on the couch with the TV on.

Eric Raskin is a veteran boxing journalist with more than 25 years of experience covering the sport for such outlets as BoxingScene, ESPN, Grantland, Playboy, and The Ring (where he served as managing editor for seven years). He also co-hosted The HBO Boxing Podcast, Showtime Boxing with Raskin & Mulvaney, The Interim Champion Boxing Podcast with Raskin & Mulvaney, and Ring Theory. He has won three first-place writing awards from the BWAA, for his work with The Ring, Grantland, and HBO. Outside boxing, he is the senior editor of CasinoReports and the author of 2014’s The Moneymaker Effect. He can be reached on X, BlueSky, or LinkedIn, or via email at RaskinBoxing@yahoo.com.