Dmitry Bivol Wants To Face His Mandatory

Bivol Ready For Barrera

WBA light heavyweightchampion Dmitry Bivol is ready to get his mandatory out of the way. Bivol was literally handed the WBA title after being the interim champion and promoted to full champion when Andre Ward retired in September and vacated his title.

Hewas allowed a voluntary defense against Trent Broadhurst earlier this month. The Russian walked through Broadhurst by stopping him in the first round in their bout in Monaco.

Withthe recent announcementof Bivol being co-promoted by Main Events a fight with mandatory challenger Sullivan Barrera shouldn’t be hard to make. Kathy Duva said following this past weekend’s card in which Barrera defeated Felix Valera that the Cuban would be offered his choice between Bivol or a fight with newly crowned WBO champion Sergey Kovalev.

Bivol told Sky Sports that he wants the fight with Barrera:

“It depends how negotiations go but I want to fight him,” Bivol said.

“He didn’t look good against Andre Ward, but we know Ward is the sort of fighter that it is extremely hard to look good against.”

“Ward didn’t make the contest exciting but he still made Barrera fight his fight. We saw that against Kovalev who is one of the best in the division and even he couldn’t be the way he usually is.”

By: Chris Henderson