Artur Beterbiev’s trainer, John Scully, says David Benavidez and Joshua Buatsi are two additional options besides Dmitry Bivol for his Beterbiev’s next fight after capturing the undisputed light heavyweight championship last Saturday night in Riyadh.
Scully feels Buatsi and Benavidez would be excellent choices for Beterbiev. He says there’s no need for him to move up to cruiserweight due to the great options at 175, and besides, he doesn’t know the names of the fighters in that weight class.
Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) defeated WBA champion Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs) with a second-half surge to win a 12-round majority decision by the scores 114-114, 115-113, and 116-112 at the Kingdom Arena.
His Excellency Turki Alalshikh will decide Beterbiev’s opponent. If he wants Bivol, as would seem to be the case, a rematch will happen in 2025. However, the boxing public would be more interested if Turki chose David Benavidez (29-0, 24 KOs) as Beterbiev’s next opponent because he’s more popular in the U.S. and will make it a far more entertaining fight than Bivol.
Benavidez won’t run around the ring trying to outbox Beterbiev for 12 rounds like Bivol did, and he’s not going to ease up in the final round like he did last Saturday.
“You have Benavidez, who’s in there, and you have Buatsi, who’s really strong. That could be a nuclear war fight. So, there are fights at light-heavy, 100%,” said John Scully to The Stomping Ground about possible options for Artur Beterbiev’s next fight.
“So, fights with Benavidez and Buatsi, I think those would be big light-heavyweight fights. But I think everybody in the world would say today they have to do a rematch. I think everybody would say that.”
Buatsi would also be a better option entertain-wise for the fans to face Beterbiev’s next opponent than Bivol because he’s a puncher too, and will be trading bombs.
“Artur needed time to get the timing down. So that took a while,” said Scully about Beterbiev needing to figure out Bivol before going after him. I thought Artur took over later in the fight. He was more aggressive and was able to push himself a little harder.
“There were two times in the fight in the seventh and eighth; I thought, ‘We’re going to stop him. In the 12th round, Dmitry didn’t give in, but it almost looked like it body-wise. Neither time came to fruition, but there were to moments where I thought we might be there,” said Scully.
