Dmitry Bivol defeats Michael Eifert to retain light heavyweight titles

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Dmitry Bivol barely broke a sweat in his return to the ring, easily defeating mandatory challenger Michael Eifert to successfully defend the IBF and WBA light heavyweight titles today in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Official scores were 120-107 from all three judges, and that was our unofficial score, as well. It would be hard to have it any other way. Bivol did score a first round knockdown on a left hook, but in his usual fashion, wasn’t trying to press too much for a stoppage at any point, save arguably for an 11th round push where he had Eifert hurt to the body. Bivol (25-1, 12 KO) had been out of action for 15 months and had back surgery during his time away from boxing, but was still heavily favored to dominate this fight with Eifert (13-2, 5 KO), who had been sitting on his IBF mandatory spot for nearly three years, and hadn’t fought at all in nearly two. The German challenger did the best he could, but there was just nothing Eifert could do with Bivol, as most sensed would be the case. The style matchup wasn’t necessarily all wrong for Eifert, it was purely a case of levels. Eifert is a solid technician, a pretty good regional fighter. Bivol is world class and elite world class at that, and a generationally great technician. Bivol didn’t show much sign of deterioration at all, but it’s worth noting this was definitely not a physically taxing fight for him, as Eifert lacked the ability to really test him at all. A third fight with Artur Beterbiev — even with Beterbiev at 41 and now inactive himself for quite a while — could be a different story just stylistically again, as could be the case for David Benavidez now that Bivol is 35, but at the same time, I would caution that Benavidez has never faced someone truly on Bivol’s level as a boxer, either. What do you want to see next for Bivol? Beterbiev 3, Benvaidez, or someone else?

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Dmitry Bivol’s comeback was an easy win, so what do you want to see him do next?