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Teddy Atlas says he doesn’t feel that the Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol fight was a robbery like some people have suggested from their undisputed light heavyweight clash last Saturday night in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Fans, especially Bivol’s team, have criticized the fight’s results. They think Bivol should have won handily despite doing very little in the bout’s second half. Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn insists that Bivol should have won 8-4.
How the Battle Was Lost
He was adamant that Bivol should have won and revealed that they appealed the decision to the four sanctioning bodies to force a rematch with Beterbiev. Bivol basically caved once Beterbeig got his offense in gear and was no different from his past opponents.
The only difference was Bivol beat-feet to escape the heavy shelling to save his hide, hoping to win a decision based on his early work. Bivol gave up the fight after the fourth round, and it was long bitter retreat, taking fire from his flanks.
The judges saw Beterbiev as having done enough to win by the following scores:
– 114-114
– 115-113
– 116-112
Atlas, who has been involved in boxing for many years, felt that former WBA champion Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs) had boxed beautifully in the early rounds, landing combinations against the slow-starting IBF, WBC and WBO champ Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs).
However, at the midpoint of the contest, Beterbiev started off his offense, and once that happened, he never let his foot off the gas pedal. He kept attacking Bivol, 33, sticking to him like a “cheap suit,” not giving him any relief from the pressure.
“When he’s got you going downhill, he keeps you going downhill; he continues to throw them [punches] as he steps,” said Tedy Atlas on his channel, talking about how Artur Beterbiev took over the fight against Dmitry Bivol once he ramped up his offense in the mid-rounds.
“He’s stepping and punching with you, so you get no relief,” Atlas continued about how Beterbiev followed the retreating Bivol around the ring, hitting him and not letting him escape in the second half. “He stays right with you, and he follows you. He sticks to you like glue. You can’t get him off of you.”
Atlas sums up perfectly how Beterbiev turned the fight around in the sixth round with his offense and Bivol’s nonstop pressure. Beterbiev walked through Bivol’s jabs, blocking them or absorbing the shots and nailing him with powerful short punches to the head.
In the tenth round, Beterbiev landed a right hand to the body of Bivol, causing him to deflate like a tire. After that punch, the bruised-up Bivol looked in pure panic. It was like a Grizzly bear was chasing him in the woods, and he couldn’t outrun the beast, who was hammering him repeatedly with shots to the head and body, mauling him.
CompuBox Final Punch stats:
- Beterbiev: 137 landed of 682 thrown for a 20% connect rate.
- Bivol: 142 of 423 for 34%
What those stats don’t show is the power of the punches Beterbiev was connecting with and their effect on Bivol. Beterbiev’s punch wore Bivol down like an old clock, leaving him too weak, hurt, and drained to do anything more than run around the ring.
Bivol took a hammering in rounds 10, 11, and 12, taking punishment from Beterbiev without throwing much of anything back. In the 12th round, Bivol went out with a whimper, holding and running around the ring.
He surrendered to Beterbiev, and it was sad to watch because he’d talked in bold terms ahead of the fight about what he was doing to do in the contest. But when the going got tough, he was surrending and unwilling to go out on his shield like a soldier in battle.
Bivol wasn’t going to humiliate himself after the fight by arguing that he deserved the decision because he knew that he’d wilted under pressure from Beterbiev and wasn’t going to make a federal case of his loss. However, Bivol should have told Hearn to pipe down and not make his side look like a poor loser afterward by crying about the outcome. It looked so bad with the way Hearn was bellyaching nonstop after the fight and continued to moan days afterward.
Hearn made his fighter Bivol look bad with the yapping that he was doing after the fight, showing that he was ultra-salty about the defeat and unwilling to take the high road to show class.
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