The inaugural fight for the absolute world light heavyweight title in the four-belt era met expectations, with Artur Beterbiev outperforming his opponent, Dmitry Bivol, according to two judges.

The first judge scored the match 114:114, which appeared to be a fair reflection in the battle between these two outstanding competitors of the “magic four-headed”.

The rematch is scheduled for tomorrow at the same location – Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, starting no earlier than 21 p.m.

“I felt I performed well, but in the end, I wasn’t fully satisfied and knew I could improve. Those thoughts—that I could rectify what went wrong in the first fight—inspired my training. The initial match highlighted the areas where I must enhance my performance. I’m grateful to Beterbiev for the rematch and to fight organizer, Turki al-Aysh-Sheikh,” remarked Russian boxer Bivol, who faced his first defeat in October last year after 23 victories.

Beterbiev, representing Canada now but previously Russian, boasts an undefeated record of 21 wins.

“I am driven by the desire to retain my titles. I emerged victorious in the first match, but we conducted an analysis of that fight during my training camp and worked on rectifying certain mistakes I made,” Beterbiev briefly stated.

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