Unified light heavyweight champion Artur Beterbiev has suffered a knee injury, resulting in his undisputed 175-lb championship against WBA belt-holder Dmitry Bovol needing to be postponed from their scheduled clash on June 1st at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Ruptured Meniscus Sidelines Beterbiev
The 39-year-old IBF/WBC/WBO champion Beterbiev (20-0,20 KOs) has suffered a ruptured meniscus while preparing for his fight against Bivol (22-0, 11 KOs).
His Excellency Turki Alalshikh hopes to reschedule the Bivol vs. Beterbiev fight for later this year. However, that would depend on how well Beterbiev recovers from his meniscus rupture. It’s a tough injury to recover from quickly, especially for an aging athlete nearing 40.
Those types of injuries reportedly require 3 to 6 months to come back from, but they can be longer depending on the severity and the age of the person. For someone 35 and older, it can take longer. Beterbiev is 39.
If it requires additional recovery time, His Excellency will need to determine if he wants to have another fighter face Bivol for his WBA title so that he’s sitting inactive for close to a year, waiting for Beterbiev’s knee to heal.
If the recovery time stretches into 2025, a tune-up for Beterbiev would be wise because he’ll have been out of the ring for a solid year by January. For him to be taking on a young mover like Bivol, it’s not the type of fight that you want to take when you’ve been out of action for 12 months and coming off a ruptured meniscus.
June 1st Card proceeds In Riyadh
Alalshikh says the 5v5 card is still on for June 1st at the Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. So provided no one from that card suffers an injury, these are the fights that be shown on June 1st:
- Deontay Wilder vs. Zhilei Zhang: New main event?
- Filip Hrgovic vs. Daniel Dubois
- Raymond Ford vs. Nick Ball
- Willy Hutchinson vs. Ammon Williams