Artur Beterbiev vs. Dmitry Bivol 2: Live Winners and Losers, Results
OK, so maybe this Riyadh Season thing isn't so bad, after all.
The stream of high-profile fight cards from Saudi Arabia topped by compelling main events continued Saturday, when Russian rivals Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol got together for the second time in four months to determine 175-pound supremacy.
The two met in Riyadh last October and Beterbiev emerged with a majority decision win that was questioned by many but nevertheless netted him the full stash of legitimate title belts in the weight class, including the WBA strap Bivol had arrived with.
The rematch topped a nine-fight card that included several other headliner-worthy matchups, though it lost a smidge of luster during fight week when IBF heavyweight champ Daniel Dubois withdrew from a title defense due to medical issues.
Undaunted by late substitutions, the B/R combat team was in place to take in all the action and deliver a definitive, real-time rundown of the show's winners and losers.
Take a look at what we came up with and drop a thought in the app comments.
Winner: The Waiting
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This time, Dmitry Bivol didn’t mind the dramatic pause.
The last time he stood in the center of the ring and waited for the reading of the scorecards, he thought he’d beaten Artur Beterbiev but found out the judges believed otherwise.
But on Saturday night, once he heard the words “and new” come from Michael Buffer’s mouth, all was forgotten and forgiven for the new undisputed king at 175 pounds.
“I’m just so happy. I went through a lot,” Bivol said. “I lost (the first time) and I felt easier maybe. I didn’t feel as much pressure this time. I was better. I was pushing myself more. I was more confident. I just wanted to win so much.”
Though one judge saw it dead-even at 114 apiece, Bivol’s wish was granted with 116-112 and 115-113 scores from the other two judges that gave him a majority decision and revenge from the lone defeat of his career by Beterbiev when the two met last time.
It was Beterbiev’s “0” that went this time, as he dropped to 21-1 and lost his four belts.
The 40-year-old rallied late to get the first decision but started strong this time and seemed in a good position at the fight’s halfway point. But Bivol began using his feet more judiciously and began landing the more telling, flashy punches down the stretch to clinch the verdict.
“I just told myself he could start from the beginning to destroy me, but I saw that he was tired also,” Bivol said. “I had to be smarter. I had to punch more. Clean punches.”
B/R agreed with one judge and gave Bivol seven of 12 rounds for a 115-113 final.
“I don’t want to talk about the decision,” Beterbiev said. “No problem. We can do a third fight.”
Winner: Sudden Surprise
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An early KO in the heavyweight co-main was no shock.
But to have Joseph Parker scoring it? Well, that qualifies as surprising.
Though the New Zealander was at a career-high 267 pounds for his thrown-together match with Congolese challenger Martin Bakole, his short-notice opponent’s 310-pound frame made him the smaller man by nearly 50 pounds. And given Bakole’s reputation as a fearsome boxer and Parker’s as more an artist in the ring, it seemed an early end was Bakole’s best-case chance.
Parker and his trainer, Andy Lee, clearly disagreed.
Rather than sticking and moving and waiting for their mammoth foe to tire, Parker stood his ground and fired a looping right in the second round that landed high on Bakole’s head, compromised his equilibrium and sent him tumbling awkwardly backward to his backside.
The 31-year-old climbed to his feet but was immediately surrendered by his lead trainer, who had made his way to the ring apron to indicate his team’s surrender.
“I stayed calm and composed and found the victory,” Parker said. “I had to be patient. When he walks in and attacks, that’s when you have to take your shot.”
The big win prompted big words, too, from Parker, who issued a cordial challenge to three-belt champion Oleksandr Usyk, who was seated at ringside.
“I want to fight for the world title,” he said. “I will fight anyone and everyone.”
Winner: Winning Ugly
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Practically speaking, Shakur Stevenson was in a no-win situation.
The WBC lightweight champ was in with a no-hoper in Josh Padley, who was plucked from his job installing solar panels midway through fight week after would-be challenger Floyd Schofield pulled out with an illness.
So that left Stevenson, not among the world’s most fan-friendly fighters anyway, in against a prohibitive underdog with almost no chance to get people revved about his performance.
And then he seemed to hurt his left hand midway through the fight, which seemed to make an all-out offensive performance even less likely than it had been.
But that’s when the New Jersey-based pound-for-pound elite changed his game, started stalking his 15-0 opponent’s body, and beat the fight out of him and his corner with three knockdowns that resulted from blows to the belly–and prompted a towel throw-in at the close of the ninth.
“He relies on his defense before his offense,” analyst Shawn Porter said. “And he relies on his defense twice after his offense, too. That’s just what he is.”
What he is, too, is still unbeaten, now up to 23-0 with 11 KOs and still in line for a prospective super showdown with fellow 135-pound title claimant Gervonta Davis.
“There’s only one fight for him, Tank Davis,” Porter said. “We want to see him and Tank get it on.”
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Loser: Breaking Character
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Just when you start to forget boxing is, well…boxing, it reminds you.
It happened this time after the WBC middleweight title bout that matched incumbent champ Carlos Adames with promotional favorite and top-ranked contender Hamzah Sheeraz.
Though Adames, from the Dominican Republic, was the more aggressive fighter for nearly each of 12 rounds and landed most of the punches that appeared meaningful, he couldn’t do any better than a split-decision draw that featured, as is often the case, some interesting scores.
One judge scored it 118-110 in the champion’s favor, meaning he won 10 rounds.
A second judge had it dead even at 114-114, or six rounds apiece.
And the third saw it in Sheeraz’s favor by a 115-114 nod, or 6-5-1 in rounds.
So the good news is that the odd verdict didn’t cost Adames his championship, which he keeps by virtue of the draw. But it leaves a bad taste for observers at ringside, many of whom thought Adames won. And those same observers saw Sheeraz’s promoter, Frank Warren, react angrily to Sheeraz’s corner team from his seat alongside Saudi power broker Turki Alalshikh.
Which made it like an officiating car crash, in slow motion.
“Wow, I knew it,” Lance Pugmire, former boxing writer at the Los Angeles Times, in his role as a moderator on the fight’s live chat on PPV.com. “But relieved Adames at least retains (his) belt. BS scoring.”
Winner: Level Achieved
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It’s tough to be the golden boy.
Or, in Vergil Ortiz Jr.’s case, it’s sometimes tough to be the favorite of the “Golden Boy.”
The 26-year-old Texan has been a prized promotional product of Oscar De La Hoya’s fight-making company for several years, and the fact that he’d not yet scaled a championship mountain led to the typical suggestions that he’s a product of hype, not substance.
But the kid took a big step on Saturday.
Fighting for the second time as a full-fledged 154-pounder, Ortiz called for and got a match with former belt-holder Israil Madrimov, who’d gone the distance with pound-for-pound elite Terence Crawford in his last fight and had more than a few people insisting he’d won.
And though it wasn’t always the dominant performance he’d shown against lesser foes, Ortiz handled an awkward style, remained patient and thrived down the stretch on the way to a unanimous decision that cemented his status as a big player in the weight class.
“This was expected. I knew that I was the better fighter,” he said. “We just wanted to show we’re the best 154 and we say yes to everybody.”
One judge gave Ortiz nine of 12 rounds and the other two saw him superior in seven of 12, which raised his pro record to 23-0 and was his second straight decision win after 21 consecutive knockouts.
Madrimov has lost two in a row after starting his career at 10-0-1.
“(I had to) stay patient, not overthrow. I knew I was gonna have to be smart,” Ortiz said. “Not to get over-excited, because I love to fight.”
Winner: Statement Maker
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It’s official. Agit Kabayel is on the radar.
The 32-year-old from Germany cinched that status just moments after beating Chinese giant Zhilei Zhang into submission in six rounds, a career-defining win he followed by shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries with reigning heavyweight champ Usyk.
They’re friendly now. They may be rivals soon.
Though a far smaller man at 6’3” and 241 pounds, Kabayel was busier and more aggressive than his 6’6”, 287-pound foe, walking the 41-year-old down in nearly every round and handling the bigger man’s dwindling firepower as the rounds went on.
Kabayel climbed off the deck after he was dropped with a left early in the fifth, then controlled the remainder of that round and began his own decisive offensive in the sixth.
A left-right combination to the body dropped Zhang to a knee just after the two-minute mark of the round and the big man refused to get up, instead taking the 10-count as Kabayel spiked to 26-0 and cemented his status as next in line for a WBC-sanctioned title shot.
“He could have gotten up but he refused to get up because there was more pain around the corner,” analyst Sergio Mora said. “Zhilei Zhang went out with a whimper."
Winner: Professional Integrity
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So, you want to be a professional boxer, eh?
Light heavyweights Callum Smith and Joshua Buatsi gave a master class on skill, technique and toughness across 12 compelling early-card rounds in a fight that wound up with Smith on top via an oddly-scored but fair unanimous decision.
The 31-year-old Buatsi and his 34-year-old foe, a former champion and opponent of Canelo Alvarez at 168 pounds, combined to throw more than 1,200 punches and land more than 500 shots–leaving each other bloodied and battered to the head and body.
Neither man was dropped but both were hurt, with Smith consistently strafing Buatsi with left hooks to the liver while Buatsi opened a cut over Smith’s eye with a head shot early.
Smith swept the scorecards and took Buatsi’s unbeaten record–the British-based Ghanaian arrived 19-0–with nods of 115-113, 116-112 and 119-110. The first score matched the B/R card, which gave Smith seven of 12 rounds, including a pivotal 12th that sealed the deal.
The win puts Smith in line for another title shot at 175 pounds, though he was beaten in seven rounds and stopped for the only time in his career, by Beterbiev in January 2024.
Loser: Competitive Combat
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It’s emblematic of a deep boxing undercard.
But even the most partisan Riyadh Season hype man would have to concede the early showcases provided for welterweight Ziyad Almaayouf and lightweight Mohammed Alakel at a mostly empty 6,000-seat arena were a little excessive.
The unbeaten Saudis entered and exited the ring undefeated thanks largely to ridiculously one-sided matchups, with the 24-year-old Almaayouf defeating Brazilian heavy bag Jonatas de Oliveira, who’d arrived with a 6-20 record and a 14-fight losing streak; while Alakel, just 20, handled Nicaraguan export Engel Gomez, who was an even more egregious 0-42-2 in 44 fights since last winning four years ago.
Ring announcer Thomas Treiber played along with the ruse, introducing de Oliveira as a “veteran of 26 professional bouts” rather than specifying his record and doing the same with Gomez as a “veteran of 53 professional bouts.”
Blow-by-blow man Todd Grishman’s cynicism showed through, however, during the one-sided traffic in the opener.
“You’ve got to compare the goodness of what we’re seeing so far from Ziyad Almaayouf,” he said, “against the badness of de Oliveira.”
Loser: Staying on Script
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It’s billed as “The Last Crescendo” and built as the greatest fight card of all time.
But it’s not been without some hiccups along the way.
Two of the seven fights on the show’s high-profile portion underwent significant revision, including Joseph Parker’s bid for a heavyweight belt that was scuttled by Dubois’ aforementioned medical issues and led to 300-plus-pound slugger Martin Bakole being drafted on two days’ notice.
Meanwhile, American lightweight Shakur Stevenson’s star turn against unbeaten 22-year-old Floyd Schofield was scrubbed when Schofield pulled out with an illness and was replaced by Englishman Josh Padley, who’s 15-0 and fought on a Saudi-produced show last fall.
It’s Stevenson’s second WBC title defense since he won the belt 15 months ago.
The venue itself was changed late in fight week as well, moving from the Kingdom Arena where Beterbiev and Bivol first tangled last October to the neighboring ANB Arena, a 6,000-seat indoor setting.
Full Card Results
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Main Card
Dmitry Bivol def. Artur Beterbiev by majority decision (114-114, 116-112, 115-113)
Joseph Parker def. Martin Bakole by TKO, 2:17, Round 2
Shakur Stevenson def. Josh Padley by TKO, 3:00, Round 9
Carlos Adames drew with Hamzah Sheeraz by split decision (114-115, 118-110, 114-114)
Vergil Ortiz Jr def. Israil Madrimov by unanimous decision (117-111, 115-113, 115-113)
Agit Kabayel def. Zhilei Zhang by KO, 2:29, Round 6
Callum Smith def. Joshua Buatsi by unanimous decision (119-110, 115-113, 116-112)
Mohammed Alakel def. Engel Gomez by referee's decision (60-54)
Ziyad Almaayouf def. Jonatas de Oliveira by referee's decision (60-54)
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