Artur Beterbiev demolishes Callum Smith, delivering a 7th-round stoppage with 2 knockdowns attained in the same round.
As soon as the first bell rang, Beterbiev marched straight to the centre of the ring, wasting no in getting to work, starting with the jab.
He immediately begins to trap Smith on the ropes after cutting off the ring, delivering salvos of power-punches once Smith is trapped.
Smith recovers after the first barrage, moving away from the ropes and tries counter, but his power-punches are often blocked.
Smith arguably had his best round in the 3rd, but couldn’t make a dent in Beterbiev, who continued to apply the pressure.
As Smith couldn’t get into a rhythm, Beterbiev was able to comfortably dominate the rounds; not facing much adversity.
Smith was incredibly stationary, and was wasting his energy moving his head, even when punches weren’t being thrown; it was however this instinct that helped him to survive until the 7th.
In short, this was an excellent performance from Artur Beterbiev, who despite on the cusp of turning 39 years-of-age, has demonstrated he can still perform at the top level.
This perfectly sets up the fight with Dmitry Bivol, which hopefully, will be the next fight for Beterbiev.
The Prediction
Finally, my prediction for this fight was for it to go over 8-rounds, with the potential for a 9th-round KO/TKO, so I had hope this was would go for a couple of rounds longer.
As Smith had not been stopped before, and had faced punchers in the super-middleweight division; namely, George Groves and Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez, I thought he might be able to go the distance, or survive until later.
Of course, Beterbiev is a monstrous puncher in the light-heavyweight division, and is naturally bigger than the majority of Smith’s opponents.
The following is a tweet that I had posted previously on my X channel:
Hats off to Callum Smith for taking on the challenge against Artur Beterbiev; my hunch is that Beterbiev will get a stoppage late in the fight.
Smith won’t be able to keep Beterbiev from getting on the inside, and it’s very likely that Smith gets worked on the ropes too much; we…
— LMGBoxFit (@LMGBoxFit) January 11, 2024
This is very much how the fight went, Beterbiev was also the more mobile fighter, and had a win against Usyk in the amateurs (Usyk had defeated Beterbiev twice in the amateurs also); and a win against Govzdyk
Beterbiev 1-2 against Usyk in the amateurs. Govzdyk is a high quality win. Yarde will likely prove to be one as well.
— Simon (@Simon52638712) January 12, 2024
Please refer to my picks on the following page: This Week’s picks
Thank you for reading.