The good news for Dmitry Bivol and Michael Eifert is that they are still expected to fight in May.
Even better news for Bivol is that he will get a home game out of the occasion.
BoxingScene has learned that a new date and location are in store for the abovementioned IBF mandatory light heavyweight championship fight. The title clash once budgeted to land on the May 23 Oleksandr Usyk-Rico Verhoeven DAZN pay-per-view event in Egypt will instead headline a separate May show in Ekaterinburg, Russia.
Further details were not made available to BoxingScene as this story goes to publication, other than two sources confirming a breaking news update from Fight Freaks Unite’s Dan Rafael via social media.
Bivol, 24-1 (12 KOs), will attempt the first defense of his second tour as a light heavyweight champion. It will also serve as his first fight in his adopted home country of Russia since a December 2021 win over Umar Salamov, which also landed in Ekaterinburg.
Bivol, a 35-year-old from Kyrgyzstan, whose family moved to Russia when he was 11, has not fought anywhere in the world since his February 2025 majority decision win over Artur Beterbiev in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Bivol became the undisputed 175lbs champ with the win, and also regained the WBA title he held for nearly seven years prior to his narrow defeat to Beterbiev in October 2024, also in Riyadh.
The win over Salamov in 2021 represented Bivol’s lone occasion when he fought in Russia as a recognized full titleholder. He will now return home as the true light heavyweight champion, even if not the fully unified one.
Bivol’s undisputed status ended when he was forced to vacate his WBC title last spring, in lieu of an ordered title consolidation bout with then-interim titleholder David Benavidez. He remains the lineal, Ring, WBA, IBF and WBO champ of the division.
After the fallout with Benavidez and the WBC, Bivol and his team braced for an ordered title defense versus Germany’s Eifert, 13-1 (5 KOs). However, the two-time titlist Bivol wound up sitting out the balance of 2025 largely to recover from surgery last summer to remove a herniated disc.
Eifert has been the IBF mandatory since a March 2023 win over former lineal champ Jean Pascal. He was previously on deck to challenge Beterbiev after the Russian knockout artist’s first fight with Bivol. However, an exception was granted to allow Beterbiev-Bivol II, with the understanding that the winner had to next face Eifert – without exception.
Bivol was prepared to embrace that reality before the WBC jumped the line and pushed for the clash with Benavidez, who has since been upgraded to the sanctioning body’s full titleholder.
Meanwhile, Eifert has fought just once in the past three years – and not at all since August 2024 after watching two ordered title fights and a targeted interim title clash all slip through the cracks. A 28-year-old from Magdeburg, Eifert finally gets to move forward with his long-sought challenge, even if it means traveling to the champion’s homeland.
