Artur Beterbiev hopes 2024 is finally the year in which he and Dmitry Bivol box to crown the first undisputed light heavyweight champion of the four-belt era.

If it were up to Beterbiev, the unbeaten 175-pound champions would’ve fought long ago. Beterbiev believes Bivol deserves the blame for them not having fought already and isn’t certain that the WBA champ truly wants to fight him.

“I hope we’re gonna fight in 2024,” Beterbiev told BoxingScene.com. “But now it’s 2023, and I think he talk about he’s gonna fight me the last four or five years. He always talk about it, only talk. I hope one day he’s finished his talking and he will fight with me. I don’t know, but he’s always talking.”

Bivol (21-0, 11 KOs), who has long resided in Russia, is scheduled to defend his WBA belt against England’s Lyndon Arthur (23-1, 16 KOs) on the “Day of Reckoning” pay-per-view show Saturday night at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. DraftKings sportsbook has established Bivol as a whopping 25-1 favorite to conquer Arthur on the Anthony Joshua-Otto Wallin undercard, which will begin at 11 a.m. ET in the United States ($39.99) and 4 p.m. GMT in the United Kingdom (£19.99).

The Russian-born, Quebec-based Beterbiev (19-0, 19 KOs) is set to defend his IBF, WBC and WBO crowns against another Brit, Callum Smith (29-1, 21 KOs), in a main event ESPN will air January 13 from Videotron Centre in Quebec City, Canada. The 38-year-old Beterbiev is favored by a slimmer margin, 4-1, to overcome Liverpool’s Smith, the mandatory challenger for his WBC belt, in a 12-round fight that was postponed almost five months because Beterbiev developed an infection in his jaw following dental surgery over the summer.

Beterbiev pointed out that he has already won two title unification bouts by knockout, against Ukraine’s Oleksandr Gvozdyk (then 17-0) and Long Island’s Joe Smith Jr. (then 28-3), whereas Bivol has not fought another 175-pound champion during his six-year reign. Bivol beat Smith by unanimous decision in a 12-round bout before Beterbiev stopped Smith in the second round in June 2022, but the Bivol-Smith match in March 2019 occurred before Smith won the WBO light heavyweight title.

“I have a question for you – I did two fights to unify already,” Beterbiev said. “I fought with Gvozdyk. Joe Smith, we did fight. You understand my question?”

Beterbiev recalled that he and Bivol were asked about fighting each other when they came face to face the week of the Tyson Fury-Francis Ngannou pay-per-view card October 28 in Riyadh.

“I want to see this fight, too,” Beterbiev said of battling Bivol. “They asked us when is the fight, this, that? I tell them, ‘Ask him. I’m ready for this fight five years ago.’ He’s always talking about fighting, not fighting. But it’s true. For the last four years, we did two unification fights, but he didn’t.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.