Dmitry Bivol Responds To Wladimir Klitschko’s Request To Not Fight Canelo Alvarez

Dmitry Bivol is set to take on Canelo Alvarez tomorrow night in Las Vegas, and he’s responded to the one person that is against it from taking place.

Wladimir Klitschko previously said that Bivol should not be defending his WBA light heavyweight title against Alvarez because of the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine, Klitschko’s native country.

“[Bivol should] absolutely not [be facing Canelo]. Every sanction, and it’s nothing against the personality or athletes, it’s about the politics of Russia,” Wladimir Klitschko told BBC Radio.

“Every Russian representative in this case needs to be sanctioned, because this way we show to Russia that the world is against this senseless war and that there’s no good in this war.”

Bivol responded and said he wishes that the Klitschko brothers – Wladimir and Vitali, who is also a former boxing world champion and now mayor of Kyiv, Ukraine – would stop mixing politics with sports.

“All his career I support him, I liked how he was fighting and of course I was glad when he won. He is [a] sportsman, he should know sports and politics is different. He was [an] athlete. Now he is politician. It is sad that wants to shake it up and mix sport and politics,” Bivol told IFL TV.

Bivol has openly stated that he’s against war of any kind; he also said that he has friends who are in Ukraine.

In response to the invasion, the WBA removed Russian boxers from their rankings and are not allowing Russian boxers to enter the ring with their flag nor play the Russian national anthem before sanctioned fights.

The title fight is scheduled for 8 p.m. ET on Saturday.