Undefeated and unleashed, with his 19 professional victories by knockout, Artur Beterbiev is the worst matchup of any light heavyweight.
Sure, there are plenty of terrifying characters in the sport, like the Japanese “Monster” Naoya Inoue, his pound-for-pound partner Terence Crawford and any number of heavyweights who can take down an opponent with a single punch. But the three-belt light heavyweight champion born in Khasavyurt, Russia, who faces Callum Smith this Saturday in Quebec City, is a completely different character.
If you saw him walking down the street, you wouldn’t cross to avoid him. He’s quick with a smile and doesn’t carry an aura of threat outside the ring.
“I’m just trying to do my job,” he said during Top Rank’s “A Tale of Ten Punches.”
However, tie gloves on him and put him in a boxing ring, and that’s a different story, even if he’s not going to make highlight reels like Crawford or Inoue. His technique is top-notch, but in a fundamental, non-flashy way. He has the power of a single blow, but usually punishes enemies with strong blows to end fights. His chin can take it, but he has enough defensive lapses to keep things interesting. And although he scored 13 of his 19 knockouts in five rounds or less, he did some of the best work of him in the later rounds.
And he is 38 years old.
In other words, he doesn’t fit the Hollywood prototype, and that has led his opponents to respect the “old man” of Montreal, but not necessarily fear him. They saw him taken down by Jeff Page and Callum Johnson, and witnessed Marcus Browne and Anthony Yarde have their moments where it looked like they would pull off the upset, and even from the start when Beterbiev showed that he was an A-1. Punisher, there were those who thought they saw enough holes in his game to be exploited.
“I see a powerful puncher coming forward, but he can be hit,” Radivoje Kalajdzic told me before challenging the Russian for the IBF 175-pound crown in May 2019. “He has gone down twice and I have power too. so it will be a fun night. I am also a fighter who shows up. In all my fights, I show up and push the issue to make it interesting.”
It was not a fun night for “Hot Rod,” who was knocked out in the fifth round.
“It’s like Mike Tyson said, ‘Everyone will have a plan before they get punched,'” Beterbiev said in “A Tale of Ten Punches.”
The two-time Olympian smiled as he quoted “Iron Mike,” certain that only a few possess that kind of fight-altering power. By then, Beterbiev’s legend grew with each fight, reaching a peak when he added the WBC belt by defeating Oleksandr Gvozdyk and then the WBO belt by finishing Joe Smith in two rounds.
Yes, Gvozdyk’s win was impressive and he may have been at his best in the fight with Smith, but if you want to know why Beterbiev is the scariest fighter in the game today, look no further than December 17, 2021 , when he knocked out Browne in the ninth round.
A cursory look at the result will lead one to assume that it was simply another dominant victory for Beterbiev, and it was, but not in the conventional sense.
“When you box a lefty it’s a little different,” said Beterbiev, who got off to a slow start before taking control. Then a clash of heads left him with a nasty cut in the middle of his forehead and the tone of the fight changed.
For Browne. Once in a winnable fight, the New Yorker was systematically defeated by Beterbiev, whose blood only motivated him more as he marched behind Browne, unwilling to let a doctor’s call determine his fate.
“When they cut me, my blood doesn’t stop,” Beterbiev said. “When you prepare for a fight, you have to be prepared for different scenarios.”
You could almost see Browne drowning in the pressure and body shots as the rounds progressed and eventually the fight was over. The scenario was unlike any Beterbiev had experienced before, but the result was the same.
A victory. A knockout. Another notch in the belt of the bogeyman, who will face another fighter confident in victory like Callum Smith.
The Liverpool native, 29-1 with 21 knockouts, with his only decision loss coming to Canelo Alvarez in 2020, is a good fighter with good power, a good chin and the tools to win, especially when Beterbiev is days away from turning 39 years old. . .
But analyzing a fight on paper is different from what happens when the combatants are actually in the ring, and Beterbiev’s intangibles make any attempt at prediction a roll of the dice at best. So when you watch this weekend’s big fight, remember this:
“A training partner compared training with me to a car accident,” Beterbiev said in “A Tale of Ten Punches.”
And he smiled again.
