The owner of three titles in the light heavyweight division (up to 79.4 kg) Artur Beterbiev (18-0, 18 KOs) from Canada during an interview for the YouTube channel ”
Ushatayka” voiced his version of the sparring with the current WBA “super champion” Russian Dmitry Bivol (20-0, 11 KOs).
Recall, Bivol claimed that during the sparring he boxed in the category up to 75 kg, and Beterbiev – up to 91 kg, and that he “tried to move so that they would not hit me.” In turn, Bivol’s coach Gennady Mashyanov claimed that Bivol “quietly outplayed Beterbiev on his feet.”
– In 2012, you had a sparring match with Dmitry Bivol. We heard the versions of Gennady Mashyanov and Bivol himself. I would like to hear your version. How did it happen?
– There was no sparring. Dima, in my opinion, was a lower category. Or in my category. I don’t even remember. He helped…
– He was 75 kg.
– He is 75 kg, maybe he was, yes. I don’t want to seem like someone out there now, that I’m showing off or something. I don’t know, there was no such thing that they put me in a sparring category below a person. It could have been a category higher, but a category lower than a person with me, so that they put me in official sparring – I don’t remember this.
– According to Bivol, these were more “fifteen”.
– Maybe, only “fifteen”, but this is not called sparring.
– Who calls it what?
— [улыбается]
Bivol vs Beterbiev? Now or never, says the promoter
