By Dan Ambrose: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) will be facing former World Boxing Council 175lb champion Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs) in early 2015, according to Fightnews.com.
Pascal, now 32, must win his fight this Saturday night against Roberto Bolonti (35-3, 24 KOs) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. If Pascal wins that fight, which would seem likely, he’ll be facing Kovalev in early 2015.
The Kovalev-Pascal fight will be pay-per-view in the U.S. That’s obviously going to be a controversial move because Pascal doesn’t have a large fan base in the U.S, and Kovalev is still a relatively newcomer in terms of being known to casual boxing fans.
Pascal is mostly known in the U.S as the guy who looked horrible in two fights against Bernard Hopkins. I’m not sure that you can sell a fight between Pascal and Kovalev. It’s a fight that would likely draw 100,000 pay-per-view buys at best no matter how much advertising they do for the clash.
One problem that would further hurt the fight is that Pascal has fought only fought three times in the last two years in beating Lucian Bute, George Blades and Aleksy Kuziemski. Bute is the only decent opponent Pascal has faced since his loss to Hopkins in 2011, and even Bute is someone who was considered past it after his loss to Carl Froch.
Boxing fans would likely prefer to see Kovalev fight WBC champion Adonis Stevenson rather than seeing him fight a guy that was beaten by Hopkins. It’s kind of a letdown for Kovalev to fight Pascal, because this guy’s career has been pretty much in suspended animation since 2011.
You can make an argument that a better fight would be for Kovalev to fight Artur Beterbiev than Pascal. At least with a fight like that fans would be seeing Kovalev fight a guy who has been busy with his career and who has the kind of talent to become a future world champion.
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