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Mike Coppinger, ESPN Boxing Insider
THERE ARE UNDISPUTED championship boxing fights, and then there are genuine summit meetings. Saturday’s offering in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is the latter and will crown not just the best light heavyweight in the world, but the top 175-pounder of a generation.
Artur Beterbiev — boxing’s only champion with a 100% KO ratio — will put his WBC, WBO and IBF titles on the line while Dmitry Bivol will risk his WBA belt in a fight for all the marbles. For the past seven years, the pair of Russian fighters have dominated the light heavyweight division, but myriad reasons prevented a clash to decide who’s best.
Since 2017, it has been Beterbiev, Bivol and then everyone else at 175 pounds. Their greatness extends beyond the weight class, though: They’re also pound-for-pound mainstays (since mid-2022 on ESPN rankings). Bivol is ESPN’s No. 4 while Beterbiev is No. 6. The ESPN BET odds illustrate just how competitive this fight figures to be: Bivol is -135 while Beterbiev is +110.
The matchup finally materializes three months before Beterbiev turns 40 (though it had been scheduled for June before Beterbiev underwent knee surgery). The sport’s inability to deliver the fight was the latest friction point for a fan base that is often denied the best against the best.
Some undisputed championship bouts don’t feature the two best fighters in a weight class. Such is reality in a sport that features four titles in each division, many of which are collected based on the whims and politics of boxing’s promoters and sanctioning bodies.
Last summer’s Terence Crawford–Errol Spence Jr. welterweight fight and May’s Oleksandr Usyk–Tyson Fury heavyweight bout fall in the same category as Beterbiev-Bivol: undisputed bouts that took years to make as rival promoters fought at the negotiating table and that truly featured the two best.
Then there are fights such as Naoya Inoue-Paul Butler, Crawford-Julius Indongo and Inoue-Marlon Tapales.
Neither fight was anticipated nor competitive. In each instance, a name boxer was a heavy favorite and was able to strike a quick deal to add the missing belts.
Whether the matchups are easy to make or not, the opportunity to call oneself undisputed champion is the ultimate accomplishment for practically every fighter (outside of eventual Hall of Fame induction).
“This is the last step with achievement in professional boxing in every weight class,” Bivol, 33, told ESPN last week. “We just could see No. 1, who’s the best. For me, it means all my career I was doing right, that I got this fight.
“And if I win this fight, I was doing everything right. Why all my life? Because I’m in boxing all my life.”
Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs) echoed his countryman’s sentiment: “It’s [the] main goal in professional boxing,” he told ESPN last week. “You know, it’s like everyone in professional boxing wants to get this goal.”
ROY JONES JR. is the last undisputed light heavyweight champion (three-belt era). And since Jones vacated one of his titles in 2000, there hasn’t been an unquestioned champion that reigned over one of boxing’s most storied divisions.
Sometimes, it’s unnecessary to crown an undisputed champion to know who’s the best in the division. Inoue, for example, was the top guy at 118 pounds long before the formality of defeating Butler in 2022. And Canelo Alvarez was the best super middleweight before he faced Caleb Plant for all the belts in 2021. Regardless, it was important to Canelo.
“It means so much to me, for the history of Mexico, to be an undisputed champion,” Canelo told ESPN.
But in the case of Beterbiev-Bivol, Usyk-Fury and Crawford-Spence, the summit meeting was needed to determine weight class supremacy.
Still, the notion of calling oneself undisputed is fleeting. After all, sanctioning body politics usually ensures it’s short-lived. Usyk vacated his IBF title weeks after he outpointed Fury in a heavyweight classic to pursue a rematch with Fury instead of facing his mandatory challenger. That belt now belongs to Daniel Dubois, who TKO’d Anthony Joshua in an upset last month.
Crawford didn’t make a single defense before he moved up to 154 pounds for his August title win over Israil Madrimov. And then there was Josh Taylor, who unified all four junior welterweight belts in May 2021 with a decision win over Jose Ramirez.
He defended the undisputed championship with a controversial decision victory over Jack Catterall. By the time he was next in the ring against Teofimo Lopez, only one belt remained as he vacated three titles rather than face obscure mandatory challengers.
The same will probably hold true for the winner of Saturday’s fight — with the prospect of a rematch on tap or facing the victor of the David Benavidez-David Morrell bout — but that hasn’t altered the allure of such an achievement.
“It feels amazing that I’m very close to my target, to my goal,” said Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs). “And at the same time, it’s [a lot of] pressure also on my shoulders. But I like this pressure. … The person who will win this fight, it means the best light heavyweight in the world today, maybe last 10 years.”
The usual suspects stood in the way of this matchup finally materializing: rival promoters, rival networks and mandatory title defenses. That problem plagued Crawford-Spence and Fury-Usyk.
“It’s so much that goes into making a megafight like this that nobody understands,” Crawford told ESPN ahead of the Spence fight. “They think that two fighters just agree and bam, here you have it. But there’s a lot of missed detail that goes into making a megafight that a lot of people don’t know and don’t understand. And then they fault the fighters for not taking the fight because things wasn’t right in the contract.”
But Beterbiev-Bivol also faced another issue.
Both had lofty financial demands for such a high-level matchup, only this was never an event that was bound for commercial success, especially compared with the two aforementioned fights. This wasn’t a fight promoters viewed as one that would generate substantial money at the gate nor on pay-per-view.
“These unification fights are so rare and so hard to make because usually there is conflict between promoters and networks that sometimes make it almost impossible,” said Keith Connolly, who manages Edgar Berlanga, Richardson Hitchins and Alycia Baumgardner among others. “Also, the amount of money it usually takes to make these fights also can be a huge hurdle to overcome.”
Nevertheless, both boxers are set to earn approximately $10 million, sources told ESPN.
“Why it didn’t happen [sooner]? Because we didn’t have some person like Turki Alalshikh and Riyadh Season who could deal with all promotions and TV stuff,” Bivol said. “I cannot see how it could happen [without Alalshikh]. How Top Rank could make a deal with Matchroom and DAZN with ESPN. I just don’t want to think about it. I’m just happy that it happened and thank God.”
Alalshikh, the chairman of Saudi Arabia’s General Entertainment Authority, has been instrumental in delivering major fights since he entered the space last October with Tyson Fury-Francis Ngannou. Last month, Alalshikh was named ESPN’s most-influential figure in combat sports.
The politics Bivol referred to will lead to an unusual broadcast arrangement Saturday, illustrating just how tricky this deal was to consummate without Alalshikh’s involvement.
Beterbiev is promoted by Top Rank, which has an exclusive media rights deal with ESPN, so the main event will be streamed on ESPN+ (6 p.m. ET). The rest of the undercard, meanwhile, will be streamed on DAZN, which has a partnership with Bivol’s promoter, Matchroom.
Without someone like Alalshikh to broker the deal and stage the fight, the machinations of the bout were left to promoters Bob Arum and Eddie Hearn, who talked on and off over the years but weren’t able to make the fight happen.
THE FIGHT SEEMED close to fruition in spring 2022 as it was being discussed to take place in St. Petersburg, Russia, where Bivol lives (Beterbiev resides in Montreal, where he often fights).
But then the opportunity to fight Canelo Alvarez — and the career-high payday it would bring with it — was presented to Bivol. He capitalized, too, with the upset victory in a rout of Canelo, boxing’s top star. The smooth-boxing Bivol followed up with a dominant win over Gilberto Ramirez to win ESPN’s 2022 Fighter of the Year.
And then, Bivol returned to routine title defenses as fans wondered when — and if — they would see him fight Beterbiev, who continued to mow down the competition, the latest being former champion Callum Smith in January.
“If [Beterbiev] hits you, it’s going to be problematic, I don’t care who you are,” Jones said earlier this year on ESPN+’s “State of Boxing.” ” … But if he lets Bivol get comfortable, it can be a problem for him because Bivol has really good feet. You have a classic fight: a classic puncher vs. a classic boxer. … These are the types of fights we love to see.”
After he was forced to withdraw from the bout in May, Beterbiev admitted he was “worried” we wouldn’t see it at all. It’s common in boxing for a fight to be postponed only to never be rescheduled. Adding to the uncertainty: Bivol proceeded with a June 1 title defense vs. Malik Zinad. An upset loss or worse, injury, and the matchup would go by the wayside.
Instead, Bivol came through with a sixth-round TKO, his first win inside the distance since March 2018.
“Today, this is the [most-wished-for] fight maybe in boxing,” Bivol said. “People wanted this fight many years ago and a lot of people are saying this is the most 50-50 fight and a fight of the boxing styles. … Historical.”
When he makes his ring walk Saturday in Riyadh, Bivol will take that final step to the apron as he looks to take that proverbial final step in his long, arduous boxing journey. If Bivol can neutralize Beterbiev’s power, end his streak of 20 KOs in 20 fights and strap all four belts across his body, “I’ll say yes, I did everything right all my life.”