Bob Arum sees no reason for Artur Beterbiev to retire.
The 38-year-old is the unified light heavyweight champion, holding the IBF, WBC and WBO belts, and tonight attempts to defend those championships when he comes up against British challenger Callum Smith.
There have been suggestions that the veteran is starting to slow a little, but he remains the clear favourite to win on Saturday evening in Canada.
Beterbiev has 19 fights in his pro career - each a knockout victory - and Arum thinks that this is in his favour.
“Age is not a relevant factor with Beterbiev,” Arum told BoxingScene.com . “If you’re 39 and you’ve had 40 or 50 fights, age matters. If you’re 39 and you’ve had 19 fights, you know, in effect your body is that of a younger guy.
“It’s really wear and tear on the body. So, you saw [George] Foreman fought way past 45 because he had 10 years where he didn’t fight at all. It’s like a car. You can have a car, an older car, but if you don’t use it very much it lasts longer.”
Beterbiev has also had periods of enforced in activity, with knee, rib and shoulder problems, plus a jaw infection causing delays.
“It is what it is,” Arum said. “Having injuries is nobody’s fault. You can’t fight if you’re injured, and he tends to have a lot of injuries. Whether he overdoes it in training, I don’t know, but they’re legitimate injuries.”
He added: “It’s a tough fight,” but that’s what [Beterbiev is] gonna need, tough fights, because we hope sometime this year to do a unification fight with Bivol. It’ll definitely happen, as long as he beats Callum Smith. It would be tremendous. The money is very high and it’s a fight that should happen.”