On Saturday, Artur Beterbiev impressively defended his IBF, WBC and WBO light heavyweight titles with a dominant seventh-round stoppage over former Ring super middleweight champion Callum Smith at the Videotron Centre, Quebec City, Canada.

Matchroom boss Eddie Hearn travelled over the pond to support his fighter, but ultimately Callum’s win wasn’t meant to be.

“I’m disappointed, it didn’t go the way we expected it to go,” Hearn admitted to The Ring at Montreal’s Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport on Sunday evening his way home ahead of the Anthony Joshua-Francis Ngannou press conference.  “I’ve been in many fights where I tried to convince myself our guy had a chance, but I genuinely thought Callum could do it last night.

“I think quite a few things didn’t go to plan. Firstly, he didn’t start fast enough, he had a really poor first round and Beterbiev likes to start slow and he already started to put a dent in Callum in that first round. Second round, good, I thought he won that round. There was a left hook that whistled by and I thought if that landed it could have been interesting, there was a right hand that he traded up, but Beterbiev was very good defensively and he wasn’t reckless at all. If you watch the [Anthony] Yarde fight, I don’t know if that was because he was away from home or whatever it was, he was very reckless early and that enabled Yarde to stand and trade. We kept saying in the build up, you just can’t take the hammer off Beterbiev for too long, it will break you at some point. So you’ve either not got to get hit or put a dent in him, and it’s very difficult not to get hit because his work rate is so good.

Artur Beterbiev (center, belts) and Callum Smith (to his right) pose ahead of their fight. Eddie Hearn is standing next to Smith – Photo by Mikey Williams/Top Rank via Getty Images

“Callum wasn’t good enough, and that’s sport. If you’re not good enough, you don’t win. And he was beaten by the better man.”

Having seen Beterbiev up close, Hearn admits the Russian-born fighter was better than he expected.

“It was a bit of everything, you don’t want to say too much after because you say, ‘no excuses.’ The inactivity doesn’t help when you’re out of the ring 17 months and you’ve got to come in and be sharp. But we knew that anyway, it’s no good saying it now,” said Hearn. “I think [Beterbiev] was better defensively than I thought, and he was more cautious than I thought he’d be. If he boxed like he did Yarde we might have had a better shot, better openings. But they’re a good team, they obviously knew [Callum] could punch and I’m not going to be just walking onto shots.

“I don’t think Callum boxed as well as he can box. It’s hard to come up with reasons when you fight a great fighter rather than just saying, ‘He was very good.'”

It appears that Hearn will see another one of his fighters, WBA ruler Dmitry Bivol, facing Beterbiev next in an battle for the vacant Ring championship.

“We’ve signed for that fight,” he said. “I signed an agreement with his Excellency to fight Lyndon Arthur and then to fight Artur Beterbiev, so we’re locked in, so it’s just down to Beterbiev now.

“Ideally we planned for that fight in April, but with Ramadan its very difficult to do that. It’s all on Saudi Arabia, they’re the people who will made it happen.

“The good thing about their position in boxing is (that) it’s not two promoters negotiating with each other. So it’s not me and (Beterbiev’s promoter) Bob (Arum) trying to do a deal for that fight. He comes to me and does a deal with Bivol and then he has to do his deal with Beterbiev, that’s it. So it’s actually good for making fights because there are no promoters butting heads. So, he’ll do the deal and work the networks out. DAZN have had it, TNT have had it. He makes it happen in that respect.”

ALSO ON RINGTV:

Wainwright weighs-in: Artur Beterbiev shows he’s still a beast with Callum Smith demolition – The Ring (ringtv.com)

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