Dmitry Bivol will be down another belt sooner rather than later. After vacating the WBC belt in the face of a clash with interim champion David Benavidez, the IBF has ordered him to face longtime mandatory challenger Michael Eifert.
Eifert (13-1, 5 KO) picked up a trinket in 2022 before upsetting a thoroughly fried Jean Pascal a year later. The Artur Beterbiev vs Dmitry Bivol saga kept his title shot on ice until October of last year, only for the sanctioning body to allow a rematch. Now, with the two pound-for-pound stalwarts approaching a potential rubber match, the IBF is putting its foot down.
On the one (and most important) hand, Eifert’s a garbage mandatory challenger. It’s ludicrous that he’s ranked above the likes of Albert Ramirez and Imam Khataev, On the other, the IBF has given Beterbiev an atypically generous amount of slack here. It’s been more than four years since Beterbiev fought an IBF mandatory in Steve Deines, who was coincidentally also German.
There’s a 0% chance that Bivol takes this fight, so odds are that Eifert faces no. 2 Conor Wallace (16-1, 11 KO) for the vacant title. Wallace won an eliminator of his own last August, edging out Jerome Pampellone by split decision.
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