Fight Club: Ruthless Artur Beterbiev in a hurry to get to the top

Andy Lewis 11:54 24/08/2015
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  • A solid Bet: Artur Beterbiev rams a left jab into Gabriel Campillo.

    Artur Beterbiev’s home town of Khasavyurt has a strong association with the brick-making industry, so perhaps it is little wonder it has such a long history of producing very hard men. 

    Beterbiev, the unbeaten light-heavyweight contender, may now reside in the more salubrious habitat of Montreal, but his aggressive style and devastating punching techniques were honed in the often troubled Russian republic of Dagestan on the Caspian Sea.

    The 30-year-old, a Muslim of Chechen stock, is not alone as a revered fighting son of his city, but he is their first world-class boxer. 

    The most popular sport in the region is wrestling and Khasavyurt, with a modest population of 130,000, is home to no fewer than six Olympic gold medal-winning grapplers.

    Beterbiev was kicked out of wrestling practice as a youngster so turned his attention to boxing, eventually winning gold medals at the European and World Amateur Championships. 

    Now in the paid ranks he looks destined for similar success. Beterbiev turned pro in June 2013 and has won his first nine bouts, all by knockout. Outside of boxing he is a complete unknown, but that will soon change. 

    There is something discernibly chilling about the way he goes about his business in the ring. 

    In an Eastern European style, not entirely dissimilar to the better known Gennady Golovkin and Sergey Kovalev, he always wants to be the aggressor, stalking his opponent with menacing intent.

    But while Golovkin is a smiling assassin and Kovalev snarls and occasionally revels in inflicting punishment, Beterbiev is dead-eyed, stoic and emotionless. 

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    His entrances are minimal, his introduction short, he doesn’t have a nickname and there is barely a hint of celebration when he wins. 

    In knocking out Gabriel Campillo he was already walking calmly back to his corner before the Spaniard had hit the canvas. 

    There is very little wastage in his output. He throws short, crisp shots with surgical precision, possesses ambidextrous power and unerring accuracy. Thus far, one of his obvious talents is that he is a lethal finisher. Once he smells blood there is invariably only one outcome.  

    Such is Beterbiev’s pedigree, and considering his age, there is no point in holding him back. 

    That’s why he already has two former world champions among his nine victims. Former IBF light heavyweight king Tavoris Cloud was expected to test him but barely survived the first round. Campillo suffered a similar fate. 

    Next for Beterbiev is an eliminator for Cloud’s old IBF title, currently in the possession of Kovalev. 

    As is the way with eliminators, the IBF worked their way down the rankings until somebody accepted the shot.

    Bernard Hopkins, Jean Pascal, Seanie Monaghan, Isaac Chilemba, and Andrzej Fonfara are among those to have turned it down and that says a lot about the fear factor Beterbiev has created among his rivals.

    The IBF’s No9 ranked fighter Sullivan Barrera (16-0, 11 KOs) is believed to be up for the challenge with the fight to take place before the end of the year. 

    Should Beterbiev emerge victorious, and he would be an overwhelming favourite, it would put him on a collision course with Kovalev, and there is no love lost between the two Russians. 

    Beterbiev claims to have beaten Kovalev twice in the amateurs although ‘Krusher’ tells a very different story about those bouts, insisting that in their first meeting he was so dominant that “Beterbiev’s head was touching his a**” and that he was robbed by corrupt judges in the second.

    A potential meeting between the two countrymen would be explosive but politics could scupper it in the same way Kovalev and WBC champion Adonis Stevenson have been kept apart. 

    Stevenson and Beterbiev are advised by Al Haymon and signed to Premier Boxing Champions while Kovalev has a deal with HBO. At the moment they don’t do business. 

    Fans can only hope that changes sooner rather than later.

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