WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol 17-0 (11) comfortably outboxed Lenin Castillo 20-3-1 (15) to retain his title for the fifth time with a clear-cut points decision victory at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago on Saturday night.
In the main support bout to the Oleksandr Usyk-Chazz Witherspoon fight, Bivol ran away with the victory by scores of 119-108, 119-108 and 120-107.
The 28-year-old Russian controlled the action with his jab and had the Dominican challenger on the canvas in the sixth from a well-timed right hand.
“Who wants to fight me? Maybe there are people who say, ‘You are a boring fighter,’ or something like this. But I try to win and I won. Who wants to try to beat me, I’m ready for all comers?” Bivol said after the fight.
“If I lost today it would be bad, but I won and I kept my belt. I saw his fights before. He is really good at counter attacking. All five rounds before that, I tried to land that punch.
Bivol reasserted his desire for a unification fight between the winner of either Oleksandr Gvozdyk and Artur Beterbiev or Sergey Kovalev and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez.
“It gets me closer to my dream which is to fight for another belt. I want to fight the winner of Gvozdyk-Beterbiev or Canelo-Kovalev.
“I can fight them now because I won today. Why can’t I get the winner of Gvozdyk-Beterbiev? We are in the same division.”
Manager Vadim Kornilov added: “This was a very good performance by Dmitry against an awkward opponent who didn’t want to engage.
“But Dmitry showed all the skills that he has that puts him at the top of the division.
“Next, we want to fight for the other world titles in the division, whoever comes away with the titles in the other two bouts in November, that’s who we will target.
“We can’t wait to fight someone who will come and try to actually win and engage.
“Once the unifications happen, excitement will come because both guys will do everything to win.”