Artur Beterbiev has been diagnosed with COVID-19, and his title defense against Adam Deines on January 30th has now been officially postponed. Top Rank, the promoters for the Beterbiev vs. Deines fight, said the fight’s new date would be announced soon.
Beterbiev (15-0, 15 KOs) was supposed to defend his IBF and WBC 175-lb titles against #5 IBF Deines (19-1-1, 10 KOs) in a 12 round fight at the VTB Arena in Moscow, Russia.
The fight will still go ahead, but it’s unclear how long it will take for the match to be rescheduled.
It’ll depend on how quickly Beterbiev, 35, can recover from the illness. If his lungs are impaired, it could take a while before facing the 29-year-old Russian born Deines.
Beterbiev has already been out of the ring for 14 months since knocking out WBC 175lb champ Oleksandr Gvozdyk in the tenth round in an exciting contest in October 2019.
It’s a big letdown that the moment from Beterbiev’s success against Gvozdyk has been slowed due to the pandemic’s impact. If not for this happening, Beterbiev would have likely returned to the ring in early 2020, and he’d be in the position for unification matches.
The two-time Russian Olympian Beterbiev was supposed to return to the ring to defend against #1 IBF Fanlong Meng, but that fight was canceled. That fight wasn’t expected to be a competitive one, so it’s not a big deal that it failed to happen.
Considering how much time Beterbiev has already lost because of the pandemic disrupting things, hopefully, his defense against Deines doesn’t wind up eating up a significant portion of 2021.
There are bigger and better fights out there for Beterbiev than this title defense against the German-based Deines. Boxing fans would like to see Beterbiev face the following fighters:
- Dimitry Bivol – WBA Super World light heavyweight champion
- Joe Smith Jr – possible soon to be WBO 175lb champ
- Jean Pascal – WBA World 175-lb champ
- Sergey Kovalev – former IBF/WBA/WBO champ
- Gilberto Ramirez – former WBO super middleweight champion
- Joshua Buatsi – #3 IBF
- Lyndon Arthur – coming off a big win over Anthony Yarde
- Badou Jack – former two-division world champion
- Marcus Browne
- Jesse Hart
- Callum Smith – former WBA super middleweight champion, who is moving up to 175 following his recent loss to Canelo Alvarez
There are many great fights out there for Beterbiev once he gets Deines out of the way.
Beterbiev’s promoters at Top Rank will likely look to match him up in a unification fight against Joe Smith Jr if he can capture the vacant WBO belt, which was recently vacated by Canelo Alvarez.
The heavy hands that Beterbiev has makes him difficult for anyone in the 175-lb division to beat. It would be interesting to see how well Callum Smith does against Beterbiev.
Smith looked weight drained for his loss to Canelo on December 19th. He’s a lot better fighter than what he showed in that fight.