{"id":930600,"date":"2026-10-12T19:38:12","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:38:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/930600\/"},"modified":"2026-10-12T19:38:12","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T19:38:12","slug":"callum-smith-to-fight-dmitry-bivol-for-unified-light-heavyweight-title-in-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/930600\/","title":{"rendered":"Callum Smith to fight Dmitry Bivol for unified light-heavyweight title in Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Britain’s Callum Smith will face Dmitry Bivol for the unified world light-heavyweight championship in Russia on 12 December.<\/p>\n

Smith, 36, will compete for the first time since beating compatriot Joshua Buatsi in February 2025 for the WBO interim light-heavyweight title.<\/p>\n

Russian Bivol, 35, will put his WBA, IBF and Ring world titles on the line.<\/p>\n

The bout will take place in Yekaterinburg, despite the UK government advising British nationals, external<\/a> against all travel to Russia.<\/p>\n

British heavyweight Joe Joyce fought in Russia in July when he was beaten by Artem Suslenkov<\/a> in Moscow.<\/p>\n

A former WBA super-middleweight champion, Smith will make a second attempt at winning a unified title, after losing against Artur Beterbiev in 2024.<\/p>\n

Russian Beterbiev then beat rival Bivol to become undisputed light-heavyweight champion, before losing the rematch in February 2025.<\/p>\n

Bivol relinquished his WBC belt<\/a> to pursue a third bout against Beterbiev, but it did not come to fruition. <\/p>\n

Of his 33 professional bouts, Smith has won 31, including 22 by knockout.<\/p>\n

Bivol has won 25 of his 26 fights and stopped 12 of his opponents, with his only defeat coming against Beterbiev.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Britain’s Callum Smith will face Dmitry Bivol for the unified world light-heavyweight championship in Russia on 12 December.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":930601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":["post-930600","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930600","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=930600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/930600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/930601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=930600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=930600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=930600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}