Beterbiev Wants To Earn His Shot at Sergey Kovalev

By Yuri Tarantin

No hand outs for up and coming light heavyweight contender Artur Beterbiev (7-0, 7KOs). He wants to earn his shot at a world title by becoming a mandatory challenger, hopefully facing former amateur rival Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23KOs), who holds the WBO/WBA/IBF titles at the weight. Kovalev faces Beterbiev's training stablemate Jean Pascal on March 14. Beterbiev will return on April 4th in the co-feature to Adonis Stevenson's defense of the WBC championship.

"[Kovalev] has three belts - this is an obvious fact, and therefore he is really a strong fighter. I do not see this as a problem - to fight with him, or with any other world champion. But I would do it after becoming the official challenger for the world title - to ensure that there were no issues. And as an amateur and as a pro I have always had the same mindset - whoever is the strongest, he should be number one," Beterbiev said.

Beterbiev remembers trading punches with Kovalev in the amateurs.

"I boxed him twice - in Kislovodsk with sparring and fighting for the championship of Russia. And I won twice," Beterbiev said.

Yuri Tarantin covers boxing for Allboxing.ru.