February 22nd this month is for certain the best boxing card in years and Dmitry Bivol is looking for vengeance.
Russians Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol represent everything that is good about the sport of boxing.
Warriors of honor who throw bombs when the first bell goes — with excellent boxing brains at the same time.
Beterbiev edged the first fight last year with a points win but it was razor close. A true pick um fight.
This time round is the same thing of course on February 22nd.
From the training footage available thus far the main thing that you get a sense that Bivol is doing more of is training strength and to be more physically robust this time around.
Bivol was, and is again for most, perceived as slightly the more technical, boxing-type of the two.
Beterbiev is a simply machine who never folds, never quits and moves forward no matter what and a quality boxer himself in his own right.
Bivol knows that more than ever now after sharing the ring with him last year.
But if boxing is a game of strategy, both fighters will look to play to their strengths and minimize exposure to perceived, or lack there of, if minimal only, weaknesses — work on them for the second fight and look not to make any mistakes.
That is always a funny game though and never easy to put into practice.
We remember a well-informed, renowned boxing trainer and mental strength expert Adam Booth of the UK saying something quite brilliant years ago regarding some of the above.
In that he basically said boxers do well when they look to work on their weaknesses as opposed to their strengths in a fight camp at times, as for want of a better way of putting it, what he was getting at, we think at least from our viewpoint, was that the strengths of the fighter will always be there naturally and a fighter will always revert to type with them in the trench warfare of a fight.
However, by working on weaknesses more than strengths in a fight game the fighter can then have a more overall no-stone-left-unturned training camp before a fight.
Time will tell who plays to their strengths more and who has ironed out the mistakes from the last fight better.
In reality, ultimately, both fighters are excellent all-round boxers as well as fighters of course.
A challenging fight to call yet again.
That’s the brilliance of it.
The card is outstanding on top of that.
Boxing is the real winner February 22nd.
