Credit – Richard Pelham / GettyImages
Dmitry Bivol gets revenge on Artur Beterbiev to become the undisputed light heavyweight champion at the ANB Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
The thrilling bout went the distance where Dmitry Bivol won a majority decision to become undisputed, holding the WBO,WBC,IBF,IBO and the Ring Magazine lineal belts. The judges’ scorecards were identical to their first bout with one judge scoring it a draw (114-114) with the other two judges in favour of Bivol scoring it 116-112 and 115-113.
The first meeting between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol was 4 months ago in October, where Beterbiev won via majority decision to unify all the belts.The scorecards caused a blitz of controversy as spectators thought Bivol won the fight.
The first two rounds were similar to their first bout, Artur Beterbiev set the pace, pushing Dmitry Bivol backwards but Bivol was landing the cleaner shots, resulting in all three judges scoring Bivol the first two rounds.
Credit – Richard Pelham / GettyImages
Beterbiev bounced back from rounds three and six where he was backing Bivol up against the ropes and being the more active fighter in between rounds.
At the midway point of the bout, Bivol caught on that the 40 year old was slowing down due to the fight being set at such a fast pace. On one of the judges’ scorecards they had Bivol winning rounds 7 to 12.
The newly crowned champion expressed his emotions after the fight during the post fight interview, “I’m just so happy i went through a lot last years” and spoke on the differences between their two bouts, “I was better, i was pushing myself more, i was more confident… I just wanted to win so much today” said Bivol.
The former champion Beterbiev says that he could be interested in a trilogy fight after his first career loss to Bivol, “I didn’t want the second fight, it wasn’t my choice, but no problem. We can do a third fight if we need to”.
