By: Sean Crose
The highly anticipated June 1st fight between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol has been postponed due to an ruptured meniscus suffered by Beterbiev. This is bad news for fight fans, of course, as injuries have plagued the 20-0 Beterbiev’s career. What’s more, the world has been waiting a long time for Beterbiev and the 22-0 Bivol to square off in the ring. On top of that the winner of a Beterbiev-Bivol match would become the undisputed light heavyweight champion of the world. As things stand, Beterbiev – who has stopped every last one of his opponents within the distance – holds the WBC, WBO, and IBF titles while Bivol holds the WBA belt.
Fortunately, there are still enough terrific matches on the June 1st card, including Deontay Wilder versus Zhilei Zhang and Daniel Dubois verses Filip Hrgovic, for the show to go on. “The fight scheduled for Saturday, June 1 at Kingdome Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia has been postponed,” Top Rank Promotions stated in a press release, “after Beterbiev suffered a ruptured meniscus in training. The plan is to reschedule Beterbiev-Bivol before the end of the year, and additional details will be provided in due course.” Beterbiev-Bivol was set to go down in Saudi Arabia, and there’s no reason to believe it will go down anywhere else, should this endlessly awaited battle finally come to fruition.