Dmitry Bivol to explore opportunities in South Korea

Dmitry Bivol is the odd man out.

The light heavyweight titleholder, who hasn’t fought since March, is scheduled to appear on the undercard of the October 12 Oleskandr Usyk-Tyrone Spong fight at the Wintrust Arena in Chicago. His opponent has not yet been officially announced, which tells you all you need to know about that foe.

Around the same time, his peers will be involved in some of the most important fights of their respective careers. One week later, Artur Beterbiev and Oleksandr Gvozdyk face off in a title unification match in Philadelphia. That’s followed by Sergey Kovalev’s defense of his belt against middleweight superstar Canelo Alvarez on November 2 in Las Vegas.

So what will Bivol do? Try to enhance his appeal in an unexpected place.

Immediately after his October 12 fight, Bivol will travel with advisor Kathy Duva to South Korea to explore business opportunities. South Korea? The mother of the Kyrgyzstan native is Korean, which evidently has attracted the attention of potential sponsors there.

“I’m going to have some meetings there,” Duva said. “Bivol’s mother is Korean, so (the sponsors) are very interested in him for that reason. We’re going there to talk about bringing Bivol to fight there next year.”

Asked to elaborate about the sponsors, Duva was opaque. “They’re in Korea and they sell their products in the United States,” she said.

Apparently, these so-called sponsors are smitten by Bivol at least in part because of his television ratings there.

“I’m working with a guy there that works with sponsorships and he literally told me that they put Bivol on a few (TV) stations over there and they put a lot of promotion behind him and they got enormous ratings. They were shocked,” Duva said.

Another Eastern-European fighter with Korean bloodlines is Gennadiy Golovkin, the hard-hitting middleweight who fights Sergiy Derevyanchenko on October 5 at Madison Square Garden. His promoter, Tom Loeffler, repeatedly mentioned interest from South Korea in hosting a Golvokin fight but nothing has materialized.