There appeared to be some confusion in a moment between Dmitry Bivol and Artur Beterbiev at the end of their legendary rematch in boxing tonight.
Some commented after that Beterbiev refused to shake Bivol’s hand but not the case, as people understood it at least.
Speaking after the fight Bivol clarified:
“After the fight, I came to Beterbiev and said, “Artur, I respect you so much. When I was young and joined the national team, I looked up to you—how you trained, you were number one. I really respect you.” I wanted to shake his hand and say thank you for this fight. We shook hands, and he said, “Thank you for the fight too.” This is sport—that’s what happened. He’s a good fighter too. Then we had another talk—he came back and said, “I won’t shake hands now because we’ll have a third fight.” It was in a normal way, not arrogant, you know. It was fine. I said, “Okay, no problem.”
Good stuff and as mentioned above, the third fight seems most likely now.
Both were great fights but tonight’s was excellent.
Beterbiev had some great moments to the body and landed some bombs in the right hand at times, Bivol was hurt at one point it looked like to us but showed his heart as a champion to finish the fight strong.
The Beterbiev jab had good success at times tonight too but he was getting caught too much by Bivol counters and combinations, Bivol was boxing excellent on the back foot at times, something maybe modern professional prize fighters have started doing more and more since the days of Floyd Mayweather (who used to do it well) and a new iteration used more and more in recent years in professional boxing — Bivol was boxing consistently well tonight from what we saw but never in a predictable rhythm per se, again, a little similar to Mayweather (in a way).
His jab was key and his distance, his use of range was outstanding.
Both will have learned more again tonight and the third fight may even be better, think about that too.
