{"id":612868,"date":"2026-05-31T00:23:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T00:23:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/612868\/"},"modified":"2026-05-31T00:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T00:23:09","slug":"dmitry-bivol-defends-wba-and-ibf-light-heavyweight-world-titles-with-michael-eifert-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/612868\/","title":{"rendered":"Dmitry Bivol defends WBA and IBF light-heavyweight world titles with Michael Eifert win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Russian Dmitry Bivol marked his return from a 15-month lay-off with a dominant display against Michael Eifert to defend his unified light-heavyweight crown in his home nation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With the IBF and WBA world titles on the line, all three judges scored the bout 118-107 in favour of the 35-year-old Bivol.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The win was Bivol&#8217;s first since February 2025 when he gained revenge on Artur Beterbiev &#8211; the only fighter to have beaten him &#8211; before having back surgery six months later.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bivol, who has wins over Saul &#8216;Canelo&#8217; Alvarez and Gilberto Ramirez, knocked Germany&#8217;s Eifert down in the first round with a heavy left hook. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Eifert was able to beat the count and made it to the bell at the end of the 12th round but could not trouble one of the pound-for-pound greats. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With a win apiece, a trilogy bout with compatriot Beterbiev could be on the horizon for Bivol, while WBA (Super) and WBO cruiserweight champion David Benavidez, who recently stepped up from light-heavyweight, has been talking up the prospect of facing the Russian. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian Dmitry Bivol marked his return from a 15-month lay-off with a dominant display against Michael Eifert to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":612869,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-612868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=612868"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/612868\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/612869"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=612868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=612868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=612868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}