By Ben Jacobs
Saturday night at the Bell Centre, Montreal could be the launch pad for yet another hard punching Russian light heavyweight. Following the rise of Sergey Kovalev in the sport, Montreal-based Artur Beterbiev (5-0, 5 KOs) makes a huge leap as he takes on former IBF champion, Tavoris Cloud (24-2, 19 KOs), the vacant NABA title will be up for grabs.
Beterbiev comes from a standout amateur background winning a gold medal at the 2009 world amateur championships as well as competing in two Olympics.
BoxingScene spoke to the Russian’s promoter, Yvon Michel, to discuss the intriguing encounter and got his thoughts on a few other topics concerning the light heavyweight division.
BoxingScene.com: How impressed are you with the rapid progress of Artur Beterbiev?
Look, he is really impressive in every aspect of what you dream of for a fighter. He has a personality; he is an intelligent person, he’s a family man. He has strength, power, speed, technique and dedication. The only thing that is missing is experience and we’re working on it. It’s a huge step (facing Cloud), we understand that, but we’ve seen him spar, I’ve had reports from his strength and conditioning coach, his trainer Marc Ramsey, who trains a lot of high performance fighter. Everything is telling me that we have an exceptional fighter on our hands.
BoxingScene.com: Does it give you more confidence knowing he was a top amateur? We’ve seen the likes of Guillermo Rigondeaux and Vasyl Lomachenko make quick progress in the pro ranks. Do you see the same thing for Beterbiev?
Yes, he was an exceptional amateur fighter, he won a gold medal as a light heavyweight, later he was successful as a heavyweight even though he’s a small guy for a heavyweight. He twice went to the Olympic Games and twice lost to the eventual gold medallist. He had a little bit of bad luck but yes, he’s going to follow in their footsteps, he’s at that level. He’s an exceptional athlete who you can go fast with. He’s going from a scheduled six-rounder to a 12-rounder against a veteran who was world champion not that long ago, whose style is as a banger, so it’s a good test for Artur but we are convinced that the world will discover he is for real.
BoxingScene.com: How do you see Cloud at this stage of his career?
I believe he is the best boxer for Artur to fight right now. We’ve been told that Cloud has been in training camp since the beginning of the summer, for him it’s a do or die fight. After having lost to Hopkins and then to be stopped by Adonis Stevenson, losing against Beterbiev will be dramatic for his career. I’m not expecting Artur to just walk through Cloud, I believe it’s a fight where he will be tested physically, Cloud will put a lot of pressure on him. He never stopped trying against Stevenson.
BoxingScene.com: You seem to love the light heavyweight division, is it just a coincidence?
It’s a coincidence really, we try to work with the best talent possible, we have Adonis as the world champion. In Montreal there’s Lucian Bute, there’s Jean Pascal. We have Eleider Álvarez who is world ranked, he’s fighting in Monaco on October 25 against Ryno Liebenberg in an interesting fight. So we have the privilege here to have so many high level light heavyweights and on Saturday Artur will come into the mix, and that will make things even more interesting.
BoxingScene.com: What do you make of Jean Pascal and Adonis Stevenson going back and forth on Twitter?
Well I understand that, Pascal wants to do some publicity or marketing to campaign to fight for the title, I have no problem against that. Jean was ready to fight Stevenson in the fall but we had other plans for Stevenson, we already have mentioned that after Adonis’ next fight, if Jean still wants the fight we have reserved April 4 in Montreal for his next fight after this one. I will announce details of that next week.
The timing was not the best, for a fight of that magnitude we wanted to make sure we have the best TV deal, the time we need to do the proper publicity, to get the best result out of the fight. April will be a perfect date for that.
BoxingScene.com: Some people have compared Beterbiev to Sergey Kovalev. Do you think Kovalev will beat Hopkins?
You know that Beterbiev beat Kovalev twice in the amateurs? Definitely it’s a good comparison. We will see how Artur develops, I believe he’s a more complete fighter than Kovalev but Kovalev has developed, he’s a pure puncher, a good technician too. I like Bernard Hopkins, he’s done a lot but I don’t see how he has a chance, he’s bitten off more than he can chew. Kovalev is at his prime and I don’t see Hopkins being able to hold him off for 12 rounds.