Imagine, it was presented to Top Rank vice president Carl Moretti, if a prime and healthy Artur Beterbiev were able to fight a prime and healthy Matthew Saad Muhammad. Moretti could barely contain himself at the thought of seeing the two legendary light heavyweights doing battle.
Beterbiev, 39, is the reigning IBF-WBC-WBO light heavyweight champion who will battle WBA champion Dmitry Bivol on Saturday at Kingdom Arena in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, for the undisputed title. Muhammad is a former light heavyweight champion and one of the great action fighters in boxing history.
"Oh my ... Oh my," Moretti said of a potential Beterbiev-Saad Muhammad bout. "That would be insane."
A bout like that would be Rock 'Em, Sock 'Em Robots come to life. But Muhammad has been retired for more than 30 years and it's one for AI to figure out how it'd have done.
It's not, though, like we're left with nothing.
Beterbiev-Bivol, though, is perhaps the best fight that can be made in boxing now. It pits a pair of unbeaten champions with Pound-for-Pound Top 10 rankings in a battle that could be Fight of the Year.
They're not getting a tremendous amount of attention because neither guy is an attention seeker. During Tuesday's arrival ceremony in Riyadh, Bivol was asked about the lack of trash talk, though he could have been asked about the lack of talk, period, from the two champions.
"I prefer to talk in the ring," Bivol said.
By comparison, the taciturn Beterbiev makes Bivol look like a Chatty Charlie. He won't say a thing if he doesn't have to in public.
As a result, the hype for the fight that would accompany a bout of this magnitude is lacking to a degree. But Top Rank president Todd duBoef said these are the kinds of fights that need to be made regularly.
"You're talking about two guys at the top of their craft and there are great stakes," duBoef said. "It doesn't get better than that."
Beterbiev is often miscast as a pure slugger because of his perfect KO percentage. And while he's among the hardest hitters in the game, he's not necessarily a single-punch KO artist, and nor is he a seek-and-destroy guy with no boxing skill.
The fight was originally scheduled for June 1, but was postponed when Beterbiev injured a meniscus. He insists it's fine now and he won't be restricted.
"He's a very underrated boxer," Moretti said. "He has extensive amateur experience and he fought so many good fighters. He's a very complete fighter. Sometimes, because of his aggression and his knockout ratio, it doesn't seem that way and pick thing he's just a big one-punch guy. But he's intelligent in the ring and movers don't bother him.
"Some people get caught up by his age and they look at the injuries he's had. His injuries are a concern, but he's gotten them taken care of. I'm glad to see him going into this fight with his knee 100 percent where he doesn't have to worry about it failing on him in the fight."
Moretti pointed out that a lot of athletes are far better after surgery. He pointed to the numerous pitchers who underwent Tommy John surgery and then returned better than they were.
Part of that is because of how diligent Beterbiev is at taking care of himself and how he works at his rehab.
"Everything he does in his life, it's with boxing in mind," his trainer, Marc Ramsay, said. "It's all to make himself as good as he can be."
Bivol, though, is much the same. He was largely ignored in the build-up to his 2022 fight with Canelo Alvarez, but it was obvious early in the bout that Bivol was the better overall fighter. For much of the fight, Bivol was able to back Alvarez up and attack him on the ropes.
Now, he's unlikely to use that strategy against Beterbiev because of the differences in style between Alvarez and Beterbiev.
"Oh, would we ever love it if he did that to Artur," Moretti said of Bivol walking to Beterbiev.
Bivol, though, has a high boxing IQ and an ability to adjust on a moment's notice. He's not going to want to give Beterbiev the opportunity to catch him flat-footed and start teeing off. Beterbiev hits so hard that if he batters a fighter's arms early in a bout, they're often unable to lift them later and Beterbiev takes advantage.
So Bivol's best bet is probably going to use a jab-heavy plan with angles and movement. He'll need to feint to try to create openings, and he if gets one, he has to take capitalize on it when he sees it.
The winner will probably be the one who makes the best adjustments and the fewest mistakes. It's shaping up as a classic battle and the winner is going to be considered not only undisputed, but one of the best five or 10 light heavyweights of the last 50 years.
Light heavyweight has quietly been one of boxing's great divisions for 50 years. You're talking about legendary fighters such as Roy Jones Jr., Michael Spinks, Andre Ward, Bob Foster, Bernard Hopkins, Marvin Johnson, Saad Muhammad, Eddie Mustafa Muhammad, Sergey Kovalev, Antonio Tarver, Mike Rossman, Victor Galindez and so many more.
The Beterbiev-Bivol winner will etch his name into the pantheon of light heavyweight legends, alongside some of the greatest to ever do it. It's more than just being undisputed, though that is a massive part of the sell. But it's a chance to become immortal and stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best to do it over the last 50 years.