Via Charles Brun: Promoter Bob Arum says WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol isn’t big enough for him to take on the winner of tonight’s 175 lb unification bout between champions Artur Beterbiev and Joe Smith Jr.
Instead, Arum decided the winner with Anthony Yarde. This British fighter is said to be even less known to American boxing fans than Bivol.
US fans who know 30-year-old Yarde remember him as the man who shot down 36-year-old Sergey Kovalev in 2019.
Some would say that Arum is useless to knock Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs) out of winner Beterbiev-Smith because he is not well known to US fans.
Given the level of publicity that Bivol has received since his disappointment with superstar Canelo Alvarez on May 7, he is now well known to boxing fans in the states and if the two hit it off. rematch, it’s going to be a BIG one in America.
Could it be that the real reason Arum doesn’t want to fight the winner of tonight’s Beterbiev vs Smith Jr match against Bivol is that they are likely to lose to him?
We saw Bivol put Joe Smith to shame in 2019, beat like a drum 12 rounds on one side. Smith’s only success against Bivol was when he hit him after the bell in the tenth inning. Smith thinks he should have been penalized for that punch. Bivol came back and beat Smith after that incident and put him in danger of being knocked out in the 12th minute.
Arum was smart enough to know what would happen to Joe Smith Jr and Artur Beterbiev if he and Bivol fought for the undisputed light heavyweight title.
Therefore, Arum will play it safe with the winner Smith vs. Beterbiev by letting them defend against WBO’s Mandatory Yarde (22-2, 21 KOs), who would stand no chance against either boxer.
“Remember, I’m a little salt what Ring Magazine or anyone else says when it comes to putting guys in #1 or #2. Who cares?” Bob Arum told Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotion when told that Ring Magazine had Dmitry Bivol rated as the #1 boxer at number 175 in their rankings.
“In the end, I hope it will be decided in the ring, right?” Arum continued on the issue of who is #1 in light heavyweight, Bivol or Beterbiev. “Finally, Bivol will have a chance to fight the unified champion who has three belts, and he has one. [WBA]. If not, it’s not, you know?
“Again, Bivol can hold the WBA belt, but he is hardly attractive. The Canelo-Bivol War dies. Canelo was probably the biggest draw in the US at the box office, and that fight went horribly, from a gate-to-gate point of view and from a pay-per-view standpoint because nobody knew about Bivol,” Arum said. .
What Arum doesn’t point out is that Bivol’s big win over Canelo made him famous in the US, and if the two were to rematch now, it would be an insanely big fight. How did Arum not know that?
It benefits Arum as the winner Beterbiev vs. Smith fought Yarde rather than Bivol because he was easy to pick. Yarde is little more than a British domestic level boxer who was exposed by Kovalev and fellow Brit Lyndon Arthur.
“Do you understand that if a fighter fights, I call it the ‘Dark Zone’ [DAZN], nobody’s watching, and besides, there’s nothing to support it because if they fight on ESPN or if Haymon’s guys fight on Showtime, there’s at least one megaphone calling about the war, the warriors. ? ‘ said Arum.
“On DAZN, nobody buys, nobody subscribes to DAZN. It’s the dead zone. As I said [Devin] Haney when I signed with Haney and he went to Australia to fight [George] Kambosos, which we showed on ESPN, ‘Welcome to sunlight. You fought in the dark [on DAZN]and I think the problem is similar in the UK.
“How many people would watch if a battle was on DAZN? Few. Again, very, very hard when you have a streaming service where you only have one sport like boxing. Impossible. There’s not enough volume and it’s not worth it.
“Now people say to me, ‘What about ESPN’s streaming service, ESPN+?’ Well, do it. You will see all kinds of sports 24/7 displayed that people can choose from. So again, I wish the people of the ‘Dead Zone’ well, but to fight a fight like Joshua and Usyk to bury it in the ‘Dead Zone’ is no good,” Arum said.
