John Scully, the trainer for IBF/WBC/WBO light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev, believes Eddie Hearn is “Childish,” using the subject of Artur’s atypical test to help his fighter Callum Smith for their fight this Saturday, January 13th at the Centre Videotron in Quebec City.
Scully says Hearn is just throwing stuff out there “for fun” so that people will talk about it, and obviously, it serves a dual purpose to give Smith (29-1, 21 KOs) an excuse if he loses the fight to Beterbiev. If Callum gets beaten, Hearn can say, ‘Well, there was an atypical test result for Beterbiev. I would have liked to have had that looked at more in-depth.’
Smith is up against it, taking on Beterbiev (19-0, 19 KOs), with his 100% KO rating, and looking in great shape to add his 20th knockout on Saturday to move forward to the undisputed championship against WBA champion Dmitry Bivol in Saudi Arabia this summer.
Trainer Scully Fires Back at Hearn
“It’s childish. “I think a promoter sometimes runs out of stuff; there are only a couple of days left until the fight, and they kind of just throw stuff out there. They do it for fun, just to give people something to talk about,” said Beterbiev’s trainer, John Scully to ProBox TV, reacting to Eddie Hearn talking the subject of Beterbiev’s atypical test results to death.
Hearn seems to be trying to help Smith, to give him a boost, because he looked so overmatched in his fight with Canelo Alvarez in 2020. Smith has fought no one sense to prepare him for this kind of fight against Beterbiev, so Hearn might be trying to help the guy.
Turning Doubt into Compliment
“If anything, that will be a compliment to Artur because everyone is wondering, how can a guy be this strong? It tells you inadvertently what is on their mind.
“In other words, if you said that guy is on steroids, it is not going to make a difference, but with Artur, they think that he’s got to be on steroids because nobody on Earth can be that strong,” said Scully.
