Okay, so the other day, this question popped into my head: did Dmitry Bivol and Oleksandr Usyk ever actually throw down back in their amateur days? You know, both guys are beasts, Eastern European, similar generation roughly. Seemed possible, right?
So, I decided to do a bit of digging. My first thought was, yeah, probably. They were both top amateurs around the same time frame. I fired up my computer and just started searching.
I typed in stuff like “Bivol vs Usyk amateur”, “Usyk Bivol amateur record”, “did Bivol fight Usyk amateurs”. You know, the usual suspects when you’re trying to find something specific like this.
Getting Through the Noise
Man, the first bunch of results were all about a potential professional fight. Everyone’s talking about whether they will fight now, especially after Bivol beat Canelo and Usyk handled Joshua. Lots of fantasy matchups and predictions. That wasn’t what I was looking for, though. Had to sift through all that chatter.
I tried refining the search, adding terms like “amateur boxing championships”, “World Amateur Boxing Championships”, “European Amateur Boxing Championships” alongside their names. Still, mostly articles speculating about the pros or comparing their pro careers.
Checking the Records
Then I thought, okay, let’s look at their actual paths. I went looking for info on their amateur careers specifically. Where did they compete? What weights?
- I looked up Bivol’s amateur background. Saw he campaigned mostly at middleweight (75 kg) and then light heavyweight (81 kg). He had a solid run, won a bunch of medals.
- Then I checked Usyk’s amateur history. This guy was a heavyweight (91 kg) pretty much through his main amateur success, capping it off with the Olympic gold in 2012 at heavyweight. Before that, he apparently fought at middleweight and light heavyweight too, but his biggest wins, the ones that put him on the map internationally towards the end of his amateur run, were at heavyweight.
That’s when it started to click.
The Conclusion I Reached
So, piecing it together, it looks like they mostly missed each other. While Bivol was dominant at light heavyweight (81 kg) in his later amateur years, Usyk had already moved up to heavyweight (91 kg) and was competing there internationally, winning the big ones.
I couldn’t find any record, any mention anywhere, of an actual amateur bout between Dmitry Bivol and Oleksandr Usyk. Found plenty on their individual achievements, tons of medals between them, but no head-to-head fight back then.
Basically, it seems they were in different weight classes during the key parts of their international amateur careers. One was settled at 81kg, the other moved up and found huge success at 91kg. So, yeah, looks like that amateur superfight just never happened. Interesting little rabbit hole to go down, though.
