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Tony Bellew has caused controversy with his tweets reacting to Artur Beterbiev’s brutal knockout victory over Callum Smith.

Beterbiev destroyed Smith as he produced a devastating sequence to end the light-heavyweight championship contest in the seventh round.

The Russian KO artist defended his WBC, IBF and WBO titles in the process as he eyes a monstrous undisputed clash against WBA belt holder Dmitry Bivol.

But his victory over Smith hasn’t gone down well with Bellew, who hailed his fellow Scouser’s effort in Montreal before taking aim at the undefeated world champion.

In the lead-up to the fight, Beterbiev returned an ‘atypical finding’ in a VADA drug test in December, but further tests came back negative for performance enhancing drugs.

He contained raised levels of HGH and testosterone metabolite 5D-androstanediol from a drug test undertaken on December 6.

As his test was ‘atypical’ rather than ‘adverse’, Saturday’s fight went ahead as scheduled.

Artur Beterbiev lands a punch on Callum Smith. Image: Getty

After his victory over the Liverpudlian, Bellew seemed to accuse Beterbiev of using PEDs as he claimed the 20-0 fighter is getting strong with age.

On X, he wrote: “He’s a beast and a fighter who is getting stronger as he gets older which is hard to believe but he is! Callum as brave as anything! A soldier who went there and gave it everything! Faced that monster in his backyard! So frustrated cos I wanna say more!”

In another post, he added: “Obviously we wanna see Bivol Beterbiev next! It’s a great fight but please show me a fighter who has got stronger with age! He’s 39 and he’s getting more destructive! Physically that’s not usually possible but he’s doing it! Our great sport needs looking at like Baseball was!”

Boxing fans on social media hit out at Bellew as they referenced the situation regarding Conor Benn.

‘The Bomber’ jumped to the defence of Benn surrounding the drug test fiasco that cancelled his fight against Chris Eubank Jr.