A casual's guide to Beterbiev-Bivol 2 (or why you should care about boxing's 'Card of the Century,' even if you don't know the names)

One of the reasons the UFC was able to get over so big during the boom days of Zuffa’s $4 billion run was that it vowed to not become boxing. What did that mean exactly? Well, for the longest time Dana White and Co. kept the promise to put on “the fights that people wanted to see,” meaning white-hot contenders could go gunning for titles, and titleholders would be granted neither safe haven nor cover from that reality. All belts would be made vulnerable to the best of the best, no matter how much a champion wanted to protect status.

Of course, it’s easier to do that when there’s but a single belt in each weight class, all fighting under one promotion. And of course, all of this was before Jon Jones learned to hold his heavyweight title just out of the reach of interim champion Tom Aspinall, but still — it was an effective model for holding fan interest. There were other things the UFC did to counter boxing’s model too — such as stacking pay-per-views with multiple big fights, rather than making a card top-heavy.

If this Saturday’s mega-card out in Riyadh tells us anything, it’s that boxing has come around to some of these ideas. The first box office event to kick off the 2025 Riyadh season is a doozy in how deep it rolls. We’re talking fathoms deep. The greatest boxing card ever assembled, they are saying. Seven different title fights. Partitions down everywhere for cross-promotion. Rematches of the highest order. Redemption stories. Matchmaking footwork at the eleventh hour. Dudes who’d never come together under ordinary circumstances meeting at the proverbial bike rack, many of them still very much in their prime.

This is how you unify a fan base. Bring a fistic spectacular that offers something for everybody. Boxing will be warming its hands off the heat of the Saudi Arabian desert this weekend, but if you’re an MMA fan or even a casual sports fan interested in diving headfirst into Saturday’s action, here’s a handy guide to help make the transition a smooth one.

OK, OK, so if this card is so good, it must have a stellar main event, right?

It does! The light heavyweight title rematch between Artur Beterbiev and Dmitry Bivol is as good as it gets. Though we are in an era of four-belt champions, as Naoya Inoue sits alongside Artur Beterbiev as an undisputed titleholder (and Terence Crawford and Oleksandr Usyk previously), you rarely get a fight of this caliber a second time with such seismic stakes. Here we have two moderately respectful Russians, each of them just as cold as a Siberian rain, coming for each other a second time. The first time they fought, back in October, Beterbiev eked out a majority decision over Bivol that gave a good portion of the fight world a reason to complain.

Wait, complain? Why?

Well, that’s because plenty of people saw it in favor of Bivol. It was so close that you couldn’t rightfully call it a robbery. It was so close that if you squinted you might see it a different way through multiple viewings. Turki Alalshikh — the Saudi Arabian Santa Claus of the boxing world, who doubles as the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority — has ordered up a dozen more rounds between the two, to hopefully bring resolution to the case.

If you like a technical fight, where fighter IQ comes into play and the depth of the skill sets are defined the deeper the fight goes, this one will deliver. Bivol has the punching power, while the 40-year-old Beterbiev solves human beings the way Bobby Fischer did grandmasters of the chess world. Bivol (23-1, 12 KOs) brings a sort of classical flare to the maelstrom of a boxing match, and it can be a thing of beauty to watch him work. As with all beautiful things, there’s an underlying cruelty in his nature.

Beterbiev (21-0, 20 KOs) is just a killer. The beard rarely bends to a smile, and in the decade before his encounter with Bivol, he had scored knockouts of everyone he faced. If there’s an interesting footnote to this rematch, it’s that neither fighter was particularly happy with the first encounter.

Bivol thought he didn’t perform well in there. He didn’t like the roulette aspects in which he engaged more than he should, and he didn’t feel he played to his advantages. And even though Beterbiev won, it wasn’t emphatic enough for his taste. Forward pressure is his one mode, and Bivol largely held him in check the first time through.

Wow, so there's a lot at stake?

There is. And an extra dangling carrot for Beterbiev might be a fight with David Benavidez, which would be a wild affair between two of the most aggressive fighters in the light heavyweight division.

Of course, Bivol can tune out that talk by tuning up Beterbiev as he advances. This fight is a literal coin flip. Vegas has it just about even.

The bottom line: These days it’s easy to fall in love with brawlers, but this is the kind of fight that can make you fall in love with boxing.

OK, sounds like a real chess match. What if I just want to see big dudes throw hands?

Oh, you're in luck. Prior to Thursday, the “real” main event might have be the heavyweight clash between IBF champion Daniel Dubois and Joseph Parker. New Zealand's Parker (35-3, 23 KOs) has been accused of being the sweetest fellow in the sweet science, as the big Uce always has a pleasant word for anyone he happens upon. That’s what makes the incredible run he’s been on such a feel-good story in boxing, landing him a golden opportunity to not only win back a heavyweight world title (in this case, Dubois' IBF belt), but to potentially punch his ticket for a massive payday against the division's reigning king, Usyk.

But then, just a little over 48 hours before the fight was scheduled to take place, Dubois fell ill and was be forced out of his big title defense with Parker.

What, wait — how is that lucky? Sounds more like a mega-bummer.

It was a mega-bummer. Or at least, it was for a couple hours. Because rather than scotch the whole thing, Alalshikh pulled off the equivalent of a buzzer-beating full-court shot by signing up Martin Bakole (22-1, 16 KOs) to step for Dubois and face Parker for Parker's WBO interim heavyweight title.

Talk about salvaging a fight. That’s a big-time get on just a day’s notice, even if reason is being thrown out the door here. Sometimes cash money has a way of making miracles possible.

Yet the magic of the deep pocket is also the minefield of the persevering Parker...

Oh? So what's the deal with this Bakole?

Brother, we're talking about a massive Congolese thumper who, to be frank, is very much the kind of heavyweight not a lot of people are eager to face. Last time he was in Riyadh, in the fall of 2023, he blasted Cameroon’s Carlos Takam all the way to Jeddah with a relentless barrage of thudding shots, each one of them that could be heard in the farthest reaches of the Kingdom Arena. He just stalked him down and hammered Takam’s entire bag of bones until the referee had seen enough. Then he flew directly to Los Angeles and left America's greatest heavyweight hope, Jared Anderson, looking shell-shocked enough to have been ripped straight out a scene from "Apocalypse Now."

Seriously, Anderson was undefeated and being spoken of as Our Next Guy over here in the States. By the time Bakole was done with him, he'd hit the canvas three times over just five rounds and had every ounce of hype ground into dust then blown gently into the Hollywood Hills. It was the type of soul-consuming clobbering that causes other heavyweights to leave fight offers on read. It's no exaggeration to say Alalshikh quite literally could not have plucked a more compelling name off his bench to step in here.

Kudos goes to Parker for not flinching at such a mega-shift of opponent. Perhaps it’s a testament to what Parker has been saying about feeling reborn as a contender. Working with George Lockhart and Andy Lee has helped him gain perspective to match his power in his quest to become a champion once again. He’s a far cry from the 25-year-who beat Andy Ruiz to win his first major title back in 2016, and he’s been smiling throughout the journey.

The bottom line: The thing about heavyweight is that you drop an X-factor into the equation and the whole thing can go up in smoke with one big right hand. This is a dangerous proposition for Parker, because, whereas the pressure fell more to Dubois in the original booking, all the risk now falls over to him. Nobody picked Bakole to emerge as the winner of the Dubois-Parker fight, and there’s a power in playing with that kind of house money.

Cool, cool. So what else?

Well, if there’s been one semi-disappointment with this colossal boxing card, it’s that “Kid Austin,” the undefeated Floyd Schofield, had to drop out of his WBC lightweight title fight with Shakur Stevenson. There was a sneaking feeling out there that Schofield would play the role of dark horse well in his fight with Stevenson, and there was just enough bad blood between the two to give it some fun dimensions.

So in steps England’s Jack Padley (15-0, 4 KOs) for a chance of a lifetime. On just three days’ notice he gets the chance to pull off one of the greatest upsets of the year as he stands in against Stevenson as a 14-to-1 underdog. Impossible task you say? Especially on nearly no-notice for a fight that’s thousands of miles from home? Hey, the old maxims stand in boxing more than anywhere else — no risk, no reward.

So this Stevenson guy is that good?

At just 27, Stevenson (22-0, 10 KOs) is one of the best American fighters going — even if people have criticized some of his more recent fights against Artem Harutyunyan and Edwin De Los Santos.

There’s a big appetite to see him in there against the likes of a Gervonta "Tank" Davis, who has his own obstacle to get through in the form of Lamont Roach on March 1 in Brooklyn. To get to those kinds of challenges, he’ll need to remind everyone what he can do against Padley. Should he be forced to labor in this one, you know his critics will come out in full throat.

The bottom line: Tune in to see Shakur do work. There’s a reason he’s on the tip of everyone’s tongue in the boxing world.

Ya know, I like this "bottom line" gimmick.

Hey thanks! Felt catchy.

Anyway, what's the one fight you're eyeballing most here?

I'm glad you asked. Sound the low-key banger alarm, because Vergil Ortiz vs. Israil Madrimov is a delight.

In an ideal world, this fight for Ortiz's WBC interim super welterweight title would’ve featured Jaron “Boots” Ennis against Ortiz, yet it didn’t come to pass. Philly’s Ennis isn’t making the leap to light middleweight just yet, but Madrimov (10-1-1, 7 KOs) is the most dangerous kind of consolation. He was supposed to be little more than mincemeat in gloves for his title defense against Crawford back in August, but he ended up giving one of the world’s pound-for-pound best all he could handle.

If Crawford was still buzzing after showcasing on Errol Spence Jr., Madrimov sobered him up with a quickness.

That showing alone makes him a threat to score a modest upset of Ortiz, who isn’t as skilled as Madrimov but is perhaps twice as mean. The 26-year-old Ortiz (22-0, 21 KOs) is undefeated and is coming off a great showing against Serhii Bohachuk, in which he took home his WBC interim title. This is — by far — the biggest moment of his career, as most of his fights have been in smaller theaters in cities like Fresno, Fort Worth and Frisco. The fight math will start to look good if he scores a big knockout against Madrimov, as he’d do something that Crawford couldn’t.

The bottom line: With 25-year-old Keyshawn Davis winning his first title last week in New York, the youth movement could be well underway with a big Ortiz moment in Saudi Arabia.

What about those heavyweights? Got anymore of them?

Do I? Can I interest you in 6-foot-6 Zhilei Zhang, who looks like a debt collector ripped straight out of a mob movie. He is a bruiser in every sense of the word. Intimidating. Large. Just menacing to study. He’s the guy who beat the guy who beat the guys in the co-main event (Joe Joyce), not once but twice. And he did it the second time when he was 40 years old. And just when you think he might be losing steam, "Big Bang" Zhang (27-2, 22 KOs) goes out and destroys Deontay Wilder last June.

"Big Bang" Zhang is a fantastic nickname.

It really is. Yet his opponent on Saturday, the German Agit Kabayel (25-0, 17 KOs), is relatively unsung for an undefeated heavyweight, especially for a Riyadh veteran who has scored back-to-back victories at the Kingdom Arena against Frank Sanchez and Arslanbek Makhmudov. He comes in as the betting favorite against the elder Zhang, and really, it’s set up to be a big coming-out party for him, given all the eyes that will be on this event. The last time an opponent survived to hear the judge’s scorecards against him was in 2021, when he was still fighting in his native Germany.

The bottom line: Somebody’s going down.

OK, that's like a billion title fights. I'm sure that's it?

Nah, this is how you know Turki is showing off — because Hamzah Sheeraz vs. Carlos Adames could be a main event all by itself in the U.K.

London’s own Sheeraz is coming for Adames' WBC middleweight title, and with his undefeated record (21-0, 17 KOs) and overall youthfulness (he’s just 25), this could be a star-fetching moment. It helps that his last fight, in which he put away Tyler Denny in the second round in front of 90,000 of his countrymen, became the catalyst for the bout with Adames. That’s a good head of steam to arrive at a title fight on.

Adames (24-1, 18 KOs) is a Dominican fighter who has perhaps been overlooked for a guy with this many knockouts, and there’s a sense that he’s carrying his chip on his shoulder because of it. But you get the sense that Sheeraz — who has no earthly notion of his own vincibility — won’t be denied. Is there a path to Saul "Canelo" Alvarez down the road if Sheeraz takes care of business? Let’s not get ahead of ourselves!

(But yes.)

The bottom line: Seriously, this could be a main event by itself. But it’s like the Maserati sitting behind the Rolls Droptail and the Lambo in the garage.

Wow. My head is spinning now. Surely, that's all?

Almost! The first fight is Josh Buatsi vs. Callum Smith for Buatsi's WBO interim light heavyweight title — and soak it all in, because it all starts here…

Smith (30-2, 22 KOs) has lost exactly two times over the course of 32 fights — once against "Canelo," and once against Beterbiev. The latter happened just last year in Quebec City, not far from Beterbiev’s adopted home of Montreal. Still, Liverpool’s own is facing an uphill battle for this opening act to the greatest boxing event in history and will make that walk as an underdog.

That’s because the Ghana-born, British citizen Buatsi is undefeated (19-0, 13 KOs) and has looked good himself, winning the WBO interim title against Scotland’s Willie Hutchinson at that big Wembley show in September headlined by Dubois vs. Joshua. You know these two will bring it, because there’s only one way to kick off a night this big, and that’s balls to the wall.

The bottom line: When a bout of this caliber starts a fight card some several hours before the main event, you know this is a new day in boxing.

Jeez. You really weren't lying. So how can I watch all of this? Probably costs an arm and a leg, no?

Surprisingly, no! The entire seven-fight party airs live on DAZN pay-per-view for £19.99 in the UK and $25.99 in the US, beginning bright and early at 11 a.m. ET (because Saudi).

Ring walks for Dubois vs. Parker (approximately 4:40 p.m. ET) and ring walks for Beterbiev vs. Bivol 2 (approximately 6 p.m. ET) come later in the day.

Or, ya know, just kept it locked to your old pals at Uncrowned for all of your fight day needs!

Shameless plug. I guess we're done here.

Sorry, sorry, couldn't resist. But yes, we're done.