Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn says he would be ready to make a rematch between light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol and Canelo Alvarez in 2025 regardless of whether Bivol wins his next fight against unified 175-lb champion Artur Beterbiev on October 12 in Riyadh.
Hearn says that if WBA champion Bivol (23-0, 12 KOs) defeats IBF, WBC and WBO champion Beterbiev (20-0, 20 KOs) in their 12-round contest at the Kingdom Arena next month , he the chance to make the undisputed championship match between Dmitri and Canelo.
If Bivol loses to Beterbiev, he could drop to 168 to face unified super middleweight champion Canelo for his three titles. Canelo (62-2-2, 39 KOs) recently mentioned that he wants to fight a rematch with Bivol, 33, if he wins against Beterbiev on October 12th. However, Canelo hasn’t said anything about still wanting to fight Bivol if he’s coming off a loss and is beltless.
This is much less appealing to Canelo for obvious reasons. He has nothing to gain from fighting Bivol under those circumstances. From Hearn’s perspective, it’s understandable why he would want Bivol to fight Canelo next, win or lose, because he’s promoting the Russian fighter, and the money a rematch would bring in would be significant.
Bivol won’t make the same kind of money fighting anyone else at 175, and his career might be sunk to the bottom in a rematch with Beterbiev if he fought in their October 12th. The last thing Hearn would want is for Bivol to get knocked out by Beterbiev a second time and be stuck with a damaged fighter.
“If Dmitry Bivol beats Artur Beterbiev, we have the opportunity to do Dmitry Bivol vs. Canelo Alvarez for the undisputed light heavyweight world championship, which suddenly brings a different kind of appeal to the (Beterbiev-Bivol) fight for Canelo,” said Eddie Listen Boxing Newsdiscussing his hopes for a rematch between Canelo and Bivol.
Canelo lost to Bivol by a 12-round unanimous decision two years ago on May 7, 2022 in Las Vegas. The scores were 115-113, 115-113 and 115-113. However, the fight was much more one-sided than the scores produced by the three judges at the T-Mobile Arena.
“If Dmitri were to lose (to Beterbiev), he could drop down to 168 to challenge Canelo Alvarez, which he’s capable of doing. So, obviously, we want to see Dmitri win this fight, and if Canelo wants that , I would love to make that happen,” Hearn said.
