Dmitry Bivol considers moving down in weight for title opportunities

Undefeated light heavyweight titleholder Dmitry Bivol (15-0, 11 KOs) is set to defend his WBA title this weekend on DAZN against Joe Smith Jr. (24-2, 20 KOs), but he’s still keeping one eye towards his future.

Of course fans would love to see Bivol unify titles against any of the other top guys at 175 — Sergey Kovalev, Oleksandr Gvozdyk, or Artur Beterbiev — but boxing politics would appear to make those bouts difficult to put together.

So Bivol tells ESPN that he thinking of possibly making a move down to 168lbs after this outing, where he could potentially face someone like Callum Smith who is also a titleholder under the DAZN banner.

“I can do it, yes,” Bivol said at the Churchill Boxing Club in Santa Monica, California. “I said it, and I can make 168. If one of the champions wants to fight with me, I’m ready.”

Bivol’s manager, Vadim Kornilov, also echoed these sentiments by admitting that there may even be more money to make at super middleweight.

“It might be tougher (to make the unification bouts), but at the same time there’s other opportunities that can open up at 168 that might be even more lucrative than the 175 opportunities,” Kornilov said.

”The 175-pound division, right now, is mostly Soviet fighters and it’s kind of hard to market those unifications,” added Kornilov.

The thought is that Bivol, who some don’t really consider to be a large light heavyweight, could be better suited moving down from 175 to 168 rather than making the leap to 200lbs to fight in the cruiserweight division.

But for now these are only things to consider. Bivol will first need to take care of business against Smith this Saturday, who is known as puncher much more than his craft. Bivol should be able to cope with a fighter like Smith as he has both punching power and good boxing skills, but any one punch can change a fight.