Marc Ramsay does not expect his protégé Artur Beterbiev to get a case of stage fright should he ever end up getting the chance to face Canelo Alvarez.
The IBF and WBC light heavyweight titleholder, Beterbiev saw his name circulating once more in boxing circles after he notched a devastating ninth-round stoppage over mandatory challenger Marcus Browne on Dec. 18 at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Beterbiev’s adopted hometown.
Not surprisingly, his performance reignited talk about a potential showdown with Alvarez, the current unified super middleweight champion who won a strap at 175 pounds over Sergey Kovalev in 2019 before dropping it to pursue title unification at 168. Now that he has accomplished the latter goal, the Mexican superstar has set his sights on earning a title at the cruiserweight limit; Ilunga Makabu has been identified as his preferred target.
Should Alvarez revisit a return to the light heavyweight ranks, Team Beterbiev would love nothing more than to offer him a welcome inside the ring.
“That [fight with Alvarez] would be interesting on several levels,” Ramsay told Mathieu Boulay of Le Journal de Montréal. “The whole team wants a fight like that one. That would really light a fire under us, especially for what that challenge would represent.”
“We’re not going there to be extras like so many others have done,” Ramsay added. “We’re going there to defeat Canelo.”
Ramsay, of course, is referring to the way certain Alvarez opponents simply fight to the level of their B-side billing. Since his hellacious two fights with Gennadiy Golovkin, Alvarez has mostly breezed past his competition, with his two most recent wins coming over 168-pound slicksters Billy Joe Saunders and Caleb Plant.
Aside from Alvarez, Beterbiev (17-0, 17 KOs) has several other enticing challenges on the horizon. Unification bouts with titleholders Dmitry Bivol (WBA) and Joe Smith Jr. (WBO) are realistic possibilities, especially the latter, since both fighters are promoted by Top Rank.
