Is it already a mandator fight between Callum Smith and Beterbiev? As far as I know, the 3-belt champion is not yet due for another mandatory title defense, correct me if I'm wrong though. But hopefully that it's not yet the case because a unification fight in the light-heavyweight is the one that people wanted and in-fact, avid fans waited for quite a long time. In the end, WBC will be a huge hurdle.
For this fight to be to fruition Callum Smith would need to defeat Pawel Stepien on March 11th, so he can get his mandated fight for the WBC against Artur Beterbiev, so the Artur Beterbiev VS Dmitry Bivol will not happen but Hearn has said he wants this fight to happen in Abu Dhabi but yeah it was a hurdle for that two to fight or collide, but yeah the Callum Smith VS Beterbiev is in the horizon if Smith defeats Pawel Smith because if not there are no chance for Callum to face Beterbiev for a title shot,
Can't really blame Paul Butler for his action as he just have to do what he had to do because it was his only chance to get a massive amount of money because getting a fight with the likes of Inoue will surely generate a good amount of money amounting to millions of dollars, that's guaranteed.
About the other champion at 122 which is Akhmadaliev, yes, Inoue will eventually face him much sooner but not for now because he doesn't possess the WBO belt. Now as a super champion, Inoue got the perk to go directly against Fulton because he got the WBO belt.
For sure every boxer wants millions of money in return for the fight who would not? surely Paul Butler has the intention of that accepting the fight and a chance to unify the belts that Inoue possesses, but surely we have all seen what happened in that fight Naoya Inoue Dominantly defeats Paul Butler while Butler already knows that he doesn't have any chance in beating Inoue and had aimed for the fight to go the distance but to no avail, he was drop by the devastating blows from Naoya Inoue,
And right now Naoya Inoue is going to greater heights and for the next unification he can achieve and I am really waiting for his chance to come,