Artur Beterbiev beat the cards – Sport – Kommersant

Outstanding Russian boxer Artur Beterbiev extended his phenomenal streak of early victories and defended the titles of the International Boxing Federation (IBF), the World Boxing Council (WBC) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO) in light heavyweight (up to 79.4 kg). In an excellent duel, held in London, the Russian coped with a very uncomfortable opponent – Briton Anthony Yard. In this fight, Beterbiev was at times very difficult, after seven rounds he was inferior to Yard on points, but in the eighth he still knocked him out.

Among the VIPs lucky enough to see the fight at Wembley Arena live was legendary promoter Bob Arum, who recently turned 91 and has seen many great fights in his long career in boxing. So Arum did not hesitate to include the fight between Beterbiev and Yard among the greatest. “The greatest, at least in the history of light heavyweight,” he clarified, sharing his feelings with ESPN. Formally, the “poster” of the fight was not that nuclear, blinding the eye, but not always the “poster” matter.

The feelings of everyone in the hall – both people who have devoted their whole lives to boxing and amateurs – should have been about the same.

It was an exemplary duel from any point of view, filled to the brim with everything that is needed for it to be engraved in memory for a long time – intrigue, sharp plot twists, blood, atmosphere.

The noise design of the duel was like a football one. In fact, few people in the audience understood whether Anthony Yarde, with his meager experience in big fights, was able to compete on equal terms with Beterbiev, an invulnerable monster who puts the strongest fighters into the ring, who knows how to overcome seemingly reinforced concrete obstacles. However, Yard gave reasons to rely on himself. All the time retreating to the ropes under the tank onslaught of Artur Beterbiev, he snarled so painfully that it did not look like a dead defense with the only desire to hold out until the break. And an unexpected left uppercut from the Brit made the audience thrash in ecstasy: he hinted at something very sharp.

Then everything was even more interesting. In the second round, Yard found himself in a corner and was forced to endure the terrible blows of Beterbiev with his right, but got out of the mousetrap that seemed to have slammed shut. In the third round, he withstood the tight jabs of the Russian and applied the jab himself quite well.

In the fourth round, the Russian boxer upped the pace, and those who were worried about him probably thought that everything would now go according to the usual scenario. There were many fights in Beterbiev’s biography in which he went exactly according to such a schedule – he allowed his opponents to look quite decent at the start, but then, suddenly, he switched the mode, turning them into submissive victims. And after the next hits of the champion of the right leg, Yard’s response was no longer perfect.

But Yard again endured everything, so that in the fifth round he would no longer appear as a victim, but as an evil hunter, rushing into the cabin with a dangerous predator and inflicting such damage on the enemy that it might seem as if he was about to collapse. However, the London battle proved that first impressions in it should not be trusted. Towards the close of this round, which threatened to turn into a catastrophe for him, Arthur Beterbiev literally returned Anthony Yarde in about a dozen seconds about the same number of blows that he had just missed.

The TV cameras took pleasure in taking close-ups of the fighters’ faces while resting, to show as convincingly as possible the price they pay to create this masterpiece. Yard’s whole face was already swollen – not a single living place, Beterbiev’s it was in the blood gushing from a cut above his left eye. And the British commentators, without restraining their emotions, tried to predict what this amazing fight could lead to. And, of course, they came to the conclusion that the forecasts are meaningless: well, yes, Anthony Yarde makes too many mistakes, the defense is still not his forte, but he fights like a lion! And so far, the outsider is doing even better than one could imagine.

In the sixth, the champion and challenger were worthy of each other. In the seventh, Anthony Yarde took out Artur Beterbiev from the right, conceded in return, but before the pause again put the audience on the ears with a new “explosion”. Lord, yes, all these several thousand people were obliged to believe at that moment that he was ready to perform a miracle, even if they did not know the score on the judges’ cards. And on two of them ahead, by the way, was Yard – with a slight, almost symbolic advantage, but the battle took place on his territory, and she could, of course, become an important factor in the interpretation of the ending by the arbitrators, could still serve as a reason to award the Briton a solid bonus for courage.

And soon all these several thousand people fell silent together, seeing how reality breaks their sweet dreams into pieces. In fact, for any expert who is well acquainted with the style of Artur Beterbiev, with the specifics of his gift, the denouement was by no means born out of nowhere.

It was a classic knockout in the spirit of Beterbiev – not crazy, cut out of a crazy insight, but ripening gradually, perhaps imperceptibly to an outsider’s eye.

The opponent looks good, cheerful, but after all, under this terrible pressure, whatever one may say, he gets tired, slowly loses energy and concentration. And it’s better for Beterbiev to catch the moment of such a loss, when you need to finish off, maybe no one in modern boxing knows how, which he proved repeatedly. So in that sense, nothing new happened in London.

But from the outside, the picture was in any case insanely beautiful. Small, at first glance, harmless failure of Anthony Yarde – from such situations before he got out easily – this time turned out to be fatal. A short right hand put the Briton off balance, and another blow that followed him laid the applicant on the floor. Referee Steve Gray allowed Yard to continue, but as soon as the fight resumed, coach Tunde Ajayi asked the match to be stopped. Anthony Yard, with his cottony legs, did not object to the nineteenth early victory of Artur Beterbiev.

A quarter of an hour later, they were smiling and hugging each other, perfectly aware of how cool the show was. And Beterbiev, speaking about his plans, of course, announced that he wanted a fight with another extraordinary Russian light heavyweight Dmitry Bivol, the owner of the World Boxing Association (WBA) belt, that is, a fight for the status of the absolute world champion. You can’t imagine a better wish. Only here ESPN, commenting on it, reminded that Bivol has a match on the agenda in September against the Mexican Saul Alvarez, who was defeated by him last spring. And so, it seems that the main event of the century in light heavyweight will have to wait until 2024.

Alexey Dospekhov