On Saturday night in London, Artur Beterbiev retained his WBC, WBO, IBF light heavyweight titles with a stoppage of mandatory challenger Anthony Yarde in eight rounds.
Attention, meanwhile, has already turned to the possibility of a mouth-watering undisputed clash between Beterbiev and his compatriot Dmitry Bivol, who currently holds the only missing belt from his collection.
“Bivol is a good job for me,” Beterbiev said of the WBA champion. “If we can organize it, let’s do it.”
And, when asked what their next move would be, Top Rank VP Carl Moretti added: “Bivol, Bivol and Bivol again.
“That’s one of the biggest fights you can make – it’s one of the biggest fights in the sport. I appreciate mandatories come up but when you have the opportunity of a full unification with two fighters like that you have to take it.
“We know Bivol and his team very well so we will reach out to them to try and make this fight next for everybody.
“We haven’t really had any talks yet, we wanted to get through this fight first. The only reluctance I can see is if he’s promised Canelo.
“But Bivol is a real fighter, he’s already beaten Canelo and the only way to unify the light-heavyweight title is to fight Artur and I think that’s what we have going for us.
“We would look to do it during the summer. Artur is a devout Muslim so will have Ramadan so that fight would probably be the summer.”
But first Beterbiev will enjoy a short vacation before thinking about a training camp ahead of his next outing. And, after leaving London after the 2012 Olympics without a medal, he will finally fly out of England’s capital holding some hardware.
“UK? This time I enjoyed it,” he added. “Now I have good memories of London. They are better memories than 10 years ago, now those memories have been a little bit fixed.”
By Declan Taylor