WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol (16-0, 11 KOs) faced off with challenger Lenin Castillo (20-2-1, 15 KOs) Thursday in Downtown Chicago two days ahead of their highly anticipated showdown this Saturday night. Bivol vs. Castillo is one of the featured bouts on Matchroom Boxing’s return to Chicago’s Wintrust Arena and will be telecast live on DAZN.
Dmitry Bivol: “We had problems getting an opponent on this date. But Lenin Castillo stepped up for this opportunity. This is going to be a great fight on Saturday and I hope everyone tunes in.”
Lenin Castillo: “I appreciate this chance. This is my first time in Chicago and I am glad to have the opportunity to take the belt away from Dmitry Bivol on Saturday night.”
Highly anticipated by who? Castillo is ranked 104 by BoxRec. Hopefully Bivol can move on to some meaningful fights after this.
Frankly, some of BoxRec’s rankings are sometimes completely off.
BoxRec pride themselves for not being biased, but let a computer program do the rankings, but even if that is true, it would just mean that their program is faulty/limited.
Just take a look at the rankings of various divisions and you will realize that some rankings are biased or just plain wrong.
That said, Bivol did pick a soft opponent this time. Not sure why. Bivol is ready to mix it up with the best in the division – maybe he just wanted to stay busy and took the first reasonable opponent.