Andrey Ryabinskiy, promoter for WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol, admits he was shocked with how easily Artur Beterbiev blew away Joe Smith.

At the Hulu Theater in Madison Square Garden, Beterbiev scored three knockdowns before ultimately stopping Smith in only two rounds to unify the WBC, WBO, IBF titles at 175-pounds.

Ryabinskiy expected the contest to last a little bit longer - at least until the second half.

"I did not expect such a quick end to the fight. I thought that the fight would drag on until the eighth or ninth round. But this is just my subjective opinion, and the match showed that Artur Beterbiev is in very, very good form. He had a great fight and confidently won. Artur is great, he looked great in battle," Ryabinskiy said to Oleg Bogatov.

The victory sets the stage for a tremendous fight between Beterbiev and Bivol - two Russian fighters - for the undisputed championship at 175.

Bivol became a major player in the sport back in May, when he outboxed pound-for-pound superstar Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez over twelve rounds to secure a dominating unanimous decision.

Bivol's team is obviously interested in staging a fight with Beterbiev, but it won't that easy to put together.

Beterbiev is promoted by Top Rank, who have an exclusive deal with ESPN. And Bivol is aligned with streaming service DAZN through a working relationship with Eddie Hearn of Matchroom. Both DAZN and Hearn are also hoping to stage a Canelo vs. Bivol rematch in 2023.

“We have an interest in organizing a fight between Beterbiev and Bivol. I don’t know if it will be possible to organize it in Russia. It would be quite difficult to do. We’ll see, I can’t tell you everything yet. But I’m sure everyone wants to see this fight. And so do we," Ryabinskiy said.