by David P. Greisman

Montreal, Canada, is a long way from Australia. But Blake Caparello has traveled quite a distance from home to work in camp with Artur Beterbiev, the 7-0 (7 KOs) light heavyweight prospect who will be facing Gabriel Campillo on April 4.

“We’ve done a couple of sessions already. Beterbiev’s a very strong fighter,” Caparello said on March 13 while at the weigh-in for Sergey Kovalev’s fight with Jean Pascal. Kovalev stopped Caparello in two rounds last year.

“The amateurs helped [Beterbiev]. I think he’s got over 300 amateurs. He’s just an all-around fighter. He’s good at what he does,” Caparello said. “He’s a very good fighter. Very accomplished. Obviously the pros are a very different game.”

This is a step up for Beterbiev, a 2009 world amateur champion who competed in the 2008 and 2012 Olympics. In his sixth fight, he stopped the faded Tavoris Cloud in two rounds.

Now he’s going in against Campillo, who had suffered three losses in four fights between 2012 and 2013, dropping a controversial split decision to Cloud, getting stopped in three by Kovalev, and losing a battle with Andrzej Fonfara in the ninth round.

But since then Campillo has won three straight, including taking out then-undefeated prospect Thomas Williams Jr. with a fifth-round technical knockout last August.

Campillo is 25-6-1 with 12 KOs.

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