All the fighters that couldn't (or wouldn't) fight Dmitry Bivol
It was hard to find somebody credible," admitted Bottjer.
"Castillo was the best choice."
Some will call the Castillo bout a "stay busy" fight, others will label it a "tune-up" bout. The reality is that this pairing is simply underwhelming.
"I just think because there's four champions and there's four sets of ratings that these [other] guys seem to have more choices -- which, by math, they do," said Bottjer.
So how did they get to this point?
"We went through numerous options, and many of them didn't want to fight Dmitry, or had other reasons, or they were injured or something like that," said Vadim Kornilov, who is part of the management team for Bivol.
"So there was absolutely nobody available."
Kornilov says that they went up and down the WBA rankings during the summer, trying to entice a contender to face Bivol. Some weren't available, while others weren't realistic options.
To dig deeper into how fights with the boxers in the WBA's top 15 didn't pan out, here's how each boxer was (or was not) approached, step by step, straight from Bivol's team, Matchroom's promoter Eddie Hearn (and Bottjer) and, in some cases, from the promoters on the other side of the equation.
WBA No. 1 contender: Jean Pascal (34-6-1, 20 KOs)
When it comes to top-rated Pascal, who earned this spot by upsetting Marcus Browne over the summer, Kornilov explained, "They have a mandatory rematch with Browne, first of all. Second of all, Dmitry has beaten Pascal in a very one-sided fight."
Kornilov said that Pascal was not even considered for this date.
WBA No. 2: Felix Valera (18-3, 15 KOs)
Rated second in the WBA was Valera -- another boxer Bivol took care of handily in his seventh pro bout. "There's no reason to do that, again," stated the manager. Valera then went out and lost to Vyacheslav Shabranskyy via DQ in the eighth and final round of their walkout bout following the Tyson Fury-Otto Wallin main event in Las Vegas on Sept. 14, due to a series of low blow punches.
WBA No. 3: Joshua Buatsi (12-0, 10 KOs)
Buatsi, from the U.K., is a talented and undefeated fighter, and this matchup will be highly anticipated one day. "We're ready to fight him at any time," said Kornilov.
"That's kind of like a [Sergey] Kovalev vs. [Anthony] Yarde situation, where you haven't boxed the people in between yet," said Hearn, who promotes Bivol and Buatsi. "So to make that jump with such a good prospect would be poor management, in my opinion."
For now, Buatsi has a fight scheduled for Nov. 2 against WBA No. 9 Blake Caparello.
"That's the fight Buatsi needs, the in-between fight, that he if he breezes through Caparello -- and he's a tough boy -- then he might be ready for a Bivol," Hearn added.
WBA No. 4: Dominic Boesel (29-1, 11 KOs)
Germany's Boesel has turned down a fight with Bivol in the past. But Kornilov admitted, "I don't really know if he's a worthy opponent or a guy that makes sense."
WBA No. 5: Marcus Browne (23-1, 16 KOs)
Prior to Browne's loss to Pascal, Bivol and his representatives were hoping to fight Browne in the fall.
WBA No. 6: Sven Fornling (15-1, 7 KOs)
Then there's Fornling, who Kornilov says, "I think he was discussed. I don't know exactly what happened with him."
WBA No. 7: Jesse Hart (26-2, 21 KOs)
Fornling is followed by Hart, who just recently moved up to 175.
"He wasn't discussed, but I don't know if he's available," stated Kornilov. "He's with Top Rank, he fights on ESPN, so it may not be the easiest fight to make."
"They never did [reach out]," confirmed Carl Moretti, VP of Boxing Ops for Top Rank.
WBA No. 8: Charles Foster (19-0, 9 KOs)
For a spell it looked like Foster would be the dance partner for Bivol, until Mother Nature intervened, or so Kornilov says.
"He was offered a very big payday for the fight, we were in negotiations with him for probably two weeks and after a while, I was told that he had some issues because of the hurricane over there in Florida and his gym was flooded. But at the end of the day, he didn't want the fight, after all."
Foster's team offers a different explanation.
"Yes, he got the offer," said Foster's promoter, Ken Casey of Murphys Boxing. "But it was a short notice and Foster's coach had gone on vacation. And [Foster] wouldn't have been able to spar for the fight, because he wasn't cleared to box until a week before the fight because of a cut from a headbutt in his August fight [against Denis Grachev]. ... He'd love that fight, if given the chance when healthy."
Finally, Hearn checked in with his own perspective on the process.
"Foster asked for an amount of money that was ridiculous, we gave it to him," Hearn said. "The manager went back and said, 'OK, great,' and he came back a day later and said, 'I'm really sorry, but he's not taking it.'"
WBA No. 9: Blake Caparello (30-3-1, 13 KOs)
"He was offered the fight, and he was an option," Kornilov said, "but he's fighting Buatsi in an eliminator."
WBA No. 10: Umar Salamov (25-1, 19 KOs)
When it came to Salamov, Kornilov was pretty blunt.
"As far as I know he wasn't the most enticing option for them to put two Russians with a Ukrainian [Oleksandr Usyk] being the main event," said Kornilov. "It doesn't make a lot of sense to have multi Soviet guys on the same card."
WBA No. 11: Badou Jack (22-2-3, 13 KOs)
"I did inquire about him,'' Kornilov said of Jack, ''but I was told he might be fighting at cruiserweight, now."
"No one has ever contacted me [about a Bivol fight]," countered Leonard Ellerbe, CEO of Mayweather Promotions, which represents Jack. "Badou's fighting by the end of the year, so that [Bivol] fight wouldn't make sense right now. After 2020, we're open to anybody."
WBA No. 12: Callum Johnson (18-1, 13 KOs)
Johnson was deemed unavailable to Bivol's brain trust, and Hearn confirmed it. "We offered him the [Bivol] fight, [but] he had a shoulder operation, so he wasn't ready," Hearn said.
WBA No. 13: Craig Richards (15-1, 8 KOs)
Kornilov admitted that when it came to Richards, "I don't know who that is, to be honest with you."
WBA No. 14: Mathieu Bauderlique (18-1, 9 KOs)
As for Bauderlique, he was never discussed.
WBA No. 15: Igor Mikhalkin (23-2, 10 KOs)
Rounding things out was Igor Mikhalkin, who was 15th in the late summer before Castillo supplanted him.
"It didn't make sense fighting each other on a card like this," said Kornilov. "Mikhalkin didn't look that good with Kovalev, and Bivol and him know each other, they're friendly. It wasn't the best option."
"We explored that, and they wanted way too much money," said Bottjer. "They priced themselves out of the fight."
