WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol 22-0 (11) once again proved he is the class of the division with a shutout victory over WBA number eight ranked contender Lyndon Arthur 23-2 (16) at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Saturday night.
It didn’t take long for the undefeated 33-year-old Russian to stamp his name on the contests, using his deft footwork and educated jab to control the distance and dictate the exchanges.
Britain’s Arthur, 32, was simply out of his depth and didn’t have the tools at his disposal to make the necessary adjustments.
Bivol banked round after round and to add insult to injury, he dropped Arthur with a left hook to the body near the close of round 11 before running away the victor at the final bell by scores of 120-107 across the board.
According to CompuBox, Arthur managed to land just 71 punches across the entire 12 rounds while Bivol connected with 116 jabs and 110 power punches. The jab was a particularly effective weapon for Bivol, with 63% of his punches thrown being the left stick with a connect rate of 51%.
Bivol now has his eyes set on the winner of next month’s fight between WBC, WBO and IBF champion Artur Beterbiev 19-0 (19) and Callum Smith 29-1 (21) at Centre Videotron in Quebec City, Canada on January 13.
“I can say it was good sparring for me,” Bivol said after the fight. “I’m glad I got his fight and I can see the way to my goal, to be undisputed, to get the winner of Beterbiev-Smith. I hope this fight happens in 2024. The next fight.”
Bivol made the boxing world sit up and take notice when he outpointed undisputed super middleweight champion Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez 60-2-2 (39) in Las Vegas, Nevada in May last year. The close scorecards failed to accurately reflect the fact that the 32-year-old Mexican superstar was barely able to lay a glove on Bivol.
One boxer who does rate Bivol amongst the best of the best is Ring Magazine cruiserweight champion Jai Opetaia 24-0 (19), who smashed Ellis Zorro 17-1 (7) with a single left cross to defend his world title in under a round on the same card.
“Bivol,” said Opetaia without hesitation ahead of the fight when asked by FightHype which boxer he was looking forward to seeing the most on the stack ‘Day of Reckoning’ card.
“I got a lot of respect for Bivol. He’s probably one of my favorite fighters at the moment.”
Opetaia went on to reveal that he dined with Bivol in the lead up to the card and discussed a possible bout in the future.
“We actually went out to dinner the other night and he said he wanted to see that fight with me and him further down the track,” Opetaia said.
“That’s a fight I would love to have. The best of the cruiserweights versus the best of the light heavies.”
