⁠WBC exposes its own hypocrisy in latest dispute with Dmitry Bivol

Boxing is a simple sport made complicated by various factions who root for their own interests at the cost of furthering the fight game — and Monday’s developments are yet more proof that some of those who run it cannot get out of their own way.

Advertisement

On Monday, Dmitry Bivol — Uncrowned’s No. 4 pound-for-pound fighter in the world — informed the World Boxing Council (WBC), via his attorney Patrick English, that Bivol has opted to “relinquish his WBC light heavyweight championship,” according to WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman on X.

Sulaiman then blasted both for the “cold and impersonal notification.”

Bivol won the WBC title, together with the WBO, WBA and IBF belts, for his Feb. 22 majority decision win over his longtime 175-pound rival Artur Beterbiev. The result avenged Bivol’s loss to Beterbiev in their first fight just four months prior. They are now tied at one win apiece in a gold standard brace of bouts.

Considering the skill sets, and the technical brilliance from Bivol and Beterbiev’s series so far, they have long been linked with a trilogy to determine who tops their rivalry. Combat sports powerbroker Turki Alalshikh backed, financed and hosted the two fights so far, and has been putting in motion the process to secure one further fight. “We want to see the third,” he excitedly said the day after Bivol vs. Beterbiev 2.

Advertisement

A source within Bivol’s camp with knowledge of the situation told Uncrowned on Tuesday that Alalshikh’s actions have exposed sanctioning bodies like the WBC when they try to get in the way of a fight between the world’s best fighters. On this occasion, it laid bare “the credibility of the ranking system and sanctioning organization, the WBC, as being jerky,” the source said.

Boxing is a sport that should produce winners. Take your fists, ram them into your opponent’s jaw and ribs until they cannot continue, or judges deem you to have edged your opponent, and you have yourself a victory.

This dispute, though, has only produced losers.

Advertisement

Bivol loses out because his trilogy no longer carries undisputed status even though it’s quite clear that both participants are the top two combatants at 175 pounds.

That Sulaiman rushed to anoint David Benavidez as an elevated champion makes a loser out of “The Mexican Monster” because it goes against Benavidez’s personal brand as an anytime, any place, anywhere BMF-type of fighter, like UFC’s cult heroes Nate Diaz and Jorge Masvidal. Benavidez himself said in a public post on social media that it wasn’t “the ideal way” to win a world title, and the way in which he’s conducted himself inside and outside of the ring to date shows he’d like nothing more than to earn a title like that by defeating Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or Bivol in the ring. Not by email.

The biggest loser here, though, is the WBC and its president Sulaiman.

Advertisement

This week’s ordeal exposes the WBC’s own hypocrisy as it was in no rush to strip Alvarez when Benavidez was the pound-for-pound mainstay’s mandatory challenger at super middleweight for more than two years. Instead, WBC was very flexible in allowing “Canelo” to fight whomever he wanted, even if Benavidez had long been considered the second-best fighter when he competed at 168 pounds.

The WBC never enforced Benavidez as a mandatory challenger back then, ultimately screwing him out of a fight many believe he’d at least have been competitive in, if not won.

There was never a hint from the WBC that Alvarez could lose his title outside of the ring.

Bivol infamously beat “Canelo” in 2022 in a light heavyweight bout with feints and triple jabs, and then months later the WBC imposed a ruling in which Russian and Belarusian boxers were removed from its ranking pool in light of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Now, just months after Bivol won the WBC title, Bivol is no longer a WBC champion, having been afforded nowhere near the level of flexibility the WBC previously allowed “Canelo,” when enforcing a mandatory process that now looks slapdash and unserious.

Advertisement

In doing so, the WBC has ignored due process, the source within Team Bivol told Uncrowned.

Bivol vs. Beterbiev 3 is indeed next, Uncrowned confirmed, and the only sanctioning body which had a claim to be “next in line would have been the IBF,” as a rotation system among sanctioning bodies exists when undisputed champions reign within one division and collect each of the sanctioning bodies’ titles.

“They [WBC] made a promise,” the source said. “The promise was that [Benavidez] get[s] a fight with the winner of Bivol vs. Beterbiev.”

Considering the upcoming trilogy and rotation policy, it’s a promise WBC was never going to be able to keep.