Referee Thomas Taylor to handle Artur Beterbiev-Dmitry Bivol
Oct 8, 2024 • 6:00 AM ET
Referee Thomas Taylor, from Newport Beach, California, will handle the light-heavyweight championship superfight between the unified champion Artur Beterbiev and the WBA beltholder Dmitry Bivol on October 12 at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Taylor recently officiated Erislandy Lara’s victory over Danny Garcia in Las Vegas, and Andy Ruiz’s draw with Jarrell Miller on the Riyadh Season bill at the BMO Stadium in Los Angeles.
In July, he oversaw Junto Nakatani’s one-round win over Vincent Astrolabio in Tokyo, and in the light-heavyweight division he was the third man for David Benavidez’s fight with Oleksandr Gvozdyk in Vegas in June.
Taylor will be joined by Glenn Feldman of the USA, Spain’s Manuel Oliver Palomo and Pawel Kardyni of Poland as the scoring officials outside the ropes.
Palomo scored Oleksandr Usyk’s big win in May in Riyadh over Tyson Fury, 115-112 in favor of Usyk, and Kardyni recently was an unused judge in Naoya Inoue’s victory over TJ Doheny.
Kardyni was also a judge for Bivol’s previous fight in Riyadh – his victory over Malik Zinad – and on that same night scored Nick Ball a two-point winner over Raymond Ford in a close contest.
The officials for the big British heavyweight title rematch between the champion Fabio Wardley and Frazer Clarke are the referee Victor Loughlin, and ringside judges Mark Bates, John Latham and Steve Gray.
Wardley and Clarke fought to a draw over 12 rounds in London.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
