Artur Beterbiev’s victory over Dmitry Bivol to become the first undisputed light heavyweight champion since Roy Jones Jr has largely been overshadowed by controversy.
The pair engaged in a compelling and fiercely contested battle on Saturday, with Beterbiev narrowly edging a majority decision on the three judges’ scorecards.
One judge scored it a draw, while the other two submitted cards of 115-113 and 116-112 in Beterbiev’s favor – but the wider margin of Pawel Kardyni’s scorecard, in particular, is being placed under a microscope.
And so, Dmitry Bivol’s manager, Vadim Kornilov, has now confirmed that he will file an official protest against the judge today.
Vadim Kornilov targets sanctioning bodies in official protest against Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol judge
With Beterbiev emerging victorious, he now holds all four of the world titles – WBC, WBO, IBF, WBA – at 175 lbs.
However, the integrity of the supervisors at these four sanctioning bodies is now being questioned by Kornilov, who suspects there is a much greater issue at play here.
“We’re gonna file a protest on Monday [today],” Kornilov told BoxNation. “I think the judge has to at least have some kind of responsibility for what he did. It’s becoming very destructive to the sport, what they’re doing.
“These [sanctioning bodies] have supervisors, the supervisors are friendly with the judges, they’re hugging the promoters, it’s beginning to look like a scheme… One of the supervisors was tapping the Top Rank guys and congratulating them before the decision was [announced].
“What is that about? What kind of buddy buddy relationship do they have there? Where is the professionalism of the sport?”
CompuBox stats show Dmitry Bivol landing more punches than Artur Beterbiev
Regardless of whether the sanctioning bodies have anything to do with the judges’ scorecards, boxing fans are still nonetheless outraged at the result of what was an incredible showdown in Saudi Arabia.
In fact, boxing’s computerized punches scoring system, CompuBox, tells a vastly different story to what the judges saw on the night.
While most of the rounds were, indeed, remarkably close, the CompuBox stats show that Bivol landed 50 percent of his power shots, whereas Beterbiev only connected with 29 percent of his.
That said, we all know that Beterbiev is a formidable puncher, and so when he lands one of his haymakers, it is likely to do significantly more damage than whatever comes back his way.