Dmitry Bivol Coasts Past Salamov

Stop me if you have heard this before but WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol looked good. This time against a formidable Umar Salamov coasting to a wide unanimous decision Saturday night in Russia.

The final scorecards for all three judges in this one were pretty easy 119-109,118-109,118-110 all in favor of Bivol in a fight that he seemed to be pretty much in control from start to finish.

The title fight that aired DAZN from Russia could be summed up simply as Bivol outboxed the fellow Russian Salamov from start to finish. The biggest fight takeaway personally was that this wasn’t exactly a closing mentality Bivol here as once he knew he could use his footwork to move circles around Salamov, that was all that was needed.

AND STILL 👑

Dmitry Bivol retains his title with a dominant points win over Umar Salamov #BivolSalamov pic.twitter.com/C4MoN68wGd

— DAZN Boxing (@DAZNBoxing) December 11, 2021

The left eye of Salamaov was pretty wrecked from this the sixth round on from the 1-2 from Bivol was giving. While he wasn’t in danger from anything that Bivol was throwing Salamov just didn’t have any answer for it. Broadcast kept saying that the fight should be stopped in the later rounds, either out of discontent for seeing Salamov hit with the same shots over and over again or wanted to be done calling the telecast.

Bivol with this win looks to somebody, why not a contest with Zurdo Ramirez at this point is still puzzling beyond me. As for this contest, we knew going in that this was another stay-busy for him and played out as much in the ring. Bivol was once seen as a guy known for getting guys out of the ring quick and this had all the earmarking of that, only to go all thirty-six minutes in another wide-points decision win. Disappointing only on the stoppage front but in the ring Bivol still looked like a boxing problem at 175, but who?