Artur Beterbiev defends his championship belts against Callum Smith

On Saturday in Quebec City, the most titled domestic boxer Artur Beterbiev can extend his phenomenal streak of early victories to 20. However, this time Beterbiev, who is defending the belts of the World Boxing Council (WBC), the International Boxing Federation (IBF) and the World Boxing Organization (WBO) ) in the light heavyweight category (up to 79.4 kg), you will have to deal with an opponent who looks, perhaps, more seasoned and more dangerous than all the previous ones. Briton Callum Smith was also a world champion for a long time, albeit in the previous category (up to 76.2 kg), and also has crushing knockout power, which has not gone away after moving to light heavyweight.

The beautiful round number 20 is, of course, given pride of place in all reviews dedicated to Saturday’s fight in Canada, where the outstanding Russian light heavyweight has long lived and trained. Well, yes, two dozen victories in a row by knockout in the absence of any other results in the track record – this will be some kind of really cool achievement. Such an achievement, which for decades will be remembered as some kind of anomaly, something that, apparently, cannot be repeated, because to repeat it requires a boxer with completely extraordinary, unique abilities – and in modern boxing, perhaps only Artur Beterbiev possesses them.

However, at stake for the owner of three championship belts in this fight is, most likely, a much more important prize than the “anniversary” knockout. Efforts to finally arrange the long-awaited match for the status of absolute world champion between Beterbiev and his compatriot Dmitry Bivol, also a fighter of rare talent, who holds the World Boxing Association (WBA) title, have been going on for many months. But it didn’t work out with him for various reasons – sporting, financial, and since the spring of 2022, having too obvious political overtones. And it seems like everything has grown together. At least, after Bivol dealt with Briton Lyndon Arthur in Saudi Arabia at the end of October, such a fight is being discussed as a done deal by everyone who can be directly involved in it: the boxers themselves, promoters, and television people. And it’s even a little strange that there is such a reinforced concrete confidence that everything will work out as it should, that Beterbiev will calmly deal with his next opponent.

Meanwhile, the formal reasons for considering the upcoming fight to be a difficult test for him lie on the surface. You can even forget about the rather long – almost a year that has passed since the victory in January 2023 over the British Arthur Yarde – Arthur Beterbiev’s downtime. After all, Callum Smith hasn’t fought for much longer. His previous performance – against the Frenchman Mathieu Boderlik – dates back to August 2022. Something else is more important. Beterbiev will turn 39 years old in a week and a half, and this is not exactly a critical age for boxing, but, let’s say, it’s already serious. And the Russian has had a lot of health-related problems in recent years. Because of them, his fight with Yarde was postponed, because of them – surgery on the jaw due to an infection – the match with Smith was postponed.

But the background of the opponent is even more important. Most likely, in terms of solidity and sonority, he surpasses the backgrounds of all 19 boxers who were previously knocked out by Beterbiev. Callum Smith has long been considered not just a great fighter, but a star almost in the upper echelon. He was the world champion in the up to 76.2 kg category and defeated the frontmen of the category: George Groves, Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam, John Ryder. Smith made his only misfire when the super middleweight decided to conquer Saul Alvarez, who had not yet lost his aura of invulnerability after his clash with Dmitry Bivol in 2022. The Mexican boxer fought with the Briton in 2020 and defeated him on points in a fight in which Callum Smith did not look so bad against the background of his genius opponent.

After this failure, Smith made a transition to the next category, which seemed quite logical. Anthropometry (and the Briton, say, is taller than Beterbiev) made it possible to turn into a light heavyweight. As is power. This was proven by Smith’s two fights at the new weight. In them, he brutally knocked out two strong fighters with decent experience – Dominican Lenin Castillo and Mathieu Boderlik. Castillo was generally carried out of the ring on a stretcher. So, saying that he is not afraid of Beterbiev and is convinced that in his “best version” he is able to cope with him, Smith undoubtedly has much more rights to such statements than the same Yard. Thanks to his authorship, they do not sound like routine bravado, which is reserved for everyone who does not want to spoil the show in advance for an outsider.

True, when assessing the situation in the Quebec match, it is difficult to ignore the nuance regarding Callum Smith’s style. And, by the way, Dmitry Bivol drew attention to him, explaining why he still has no doubt that his intersection with Artur Beterbiev is inevitable. In fact, the Briton gained all his regalia, his reputation, using the same method. Smith’s strong point is not subtlety, but toughness, which, as Castillo and Boderlik will attest, is effective at light heavyweight. And despite his decent height and decent length of arms, for some reason he is stiff in close combat. Smith’s strong point is to break the distance at the first opportunity, push with a drill and shoot with all sorts of sharp and short uppercuts and side cuts.

From the outside, his boxing sometimes looks simply gorgeous. But the thing is that if Artur Beterbiev experienced certain difficulties with any of his opponents, then only with those who did not think of entering into a bloody battle with him, with those who, like the Ukrainian Alexander Gvozdyk in 2019 , preferred to stay away from him and move not forward, but backward or sideways. And fearless fighters have always been easy prey for Beterbiev, who, finding himself close to his opponent, is most dangerous.

Alexey Dospehov