Artur Beterbiev remained perfect tonight, knocking out Callum Smith in the seventh round to retain his WBC, IBF and WBO light heavyweight titles in Quebec City.
With the win, Beterbiev improves to 20-0 (20 KO) at age 38, with Smith dropping to 29-2 (21 KO) in defeat.
The official scores at the time of the stoppage were 58-56, 58-56 and 59-55 for Beterbiev; the first two were possibly a little generous to Smith.
Bad Left Hook had two unofficial scores of 60-54 for Beterbiev, who as always was doing damage and dictating the vast majority of the fight.
Smith, 33, never quite got into this one, as Beterbiev came out a little more aggressive than usual in the first round. But Smith did his best to prove a legitimate challenge to Beterbiev, and gave as quality an effort as anyone against his Terminator-like opponent.
Smith had never fallen in his career, but he fell twice under Beterbiev’s heavy blows, both times in what ended up being the final round. After the second knockdown, trainer Buddy McGirt entered the ring to make sure referee Michael Griffin saw him and stop the fight.
The big fight at light heavyweight obviously remains Beterbiev facing WBA champion Dmitry Bivol, but one of two things will have to happen for that to become a reality.
Either the WBC will have to relent on its decision that Russian fighters cannot fight for their titles (Bivol and Beterbiev are both Russian, but Beterbiev is a Canadian citizen and is now listed in Canada as his country) or Beterbiev would have to be willing to do so. . giving up the WBC belt, which would mean that Beterbiev vs Bivol would not be “undisputed”, which shouldn’t be a problem since it’s more of a marketing tool than anything else, and everyone knows that’s the fight at 175.
In the main support, super middleweight contender Christian Mbilli improved to 26-0 (22 KO) by stopping one game, but outpointed Rohan Murdock after six rounds of one-way action.
Murdock (27-3, 19 KO) has nothing to be ashamed of here, as he did his best and held his own against a guy who was lighting him up with hard punches the entire fight, and Mbilli can punch. Murdock showed an iron chin just to stay on his feet during this fight, because the action started hot in the first round.
But the Australian simply didn’t have enough answers for Mbilli, 28, who was born in Cameroon and fights in France, with his career based in Quebec. Throughout the sixth round, Murdock’s trainer grabbed the towel and was ready to throw it in, only for Mbilli to not land anything too substantial until the final moments, but that was enough to stop the fight once the round was over, and it was the correct call.
Mbilli asked for a fight with Canelo Álvarez after his victory.
Also on the card, Jason Moloney defeated Saúl Sánchez in an excellent fight for the bantamweight title, retaining the WBO belt.
