Kovalev vs. Pascal brings in 1.2 mil viewers on HBO

By Boxing News - 03/17/2015 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev’s fight last Saturday night against Canada’s Jean Pascal (29-3-1, 17 KOs) was a huge success on HBO Championship Boxing. The fight pulled in a peak of 1.2 million viewers on HBO, with an average of 1.152 million.

While some of the success of the card has to do with Pascal’s own popularity and him being well-known to a lot of casual boxing fans, it’s also a sign that Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) is quickly picking up a lot of fans.

The Russian fighter is becoming a big name in the United States much in the same way WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin is winning over the American fans with his long consecutive knockout streak. The fans wants to see knockouts, and both Kovalev and Golovkin are giving the fans what they want to see against the best available opposition.

“Per Nielsen, Kovalev-Pascal averaged 1.152M viewers for live HBO airing. Peaked at 1.2M. Entire broadcast averaged 956k. #boxing,” Dan Rafael said on his twitter. “Chilemba-Lepikhin HBO opener averaged 850k (peak 968k). Glazkov-Cunningham co-feature averaged 958k (peak 1.057M).”

Pascal did his best to try and survive the full 12 rounds against Kovalev, but it was no use. Kovalev caught up to Pascal in the 8th round and knocked him against the ropes with a left hook to the head. Pascal was shaken up from the blow, and drunkenly walked to the corner to be checked out by the referee.

Kovalev then fired off two right hands to the side of Pascal’s head that landed cleanly. The fight was then stopped with Pascal still on his feet. While Pascal wasn’t ready to admit it afterwards, the referee did the right thing by stopping it rather than letting Kovalev tee off on him.

Pascal was far behind in the fight, and there was little chance that he could have made it out of the round, let alone finish the final four rounds of the fight. It was no longer competitive at that point in the fight, as Kovalev was nailing a tired and hurt Pascal at will with power shots to the head.

Kovalev will need to make a defense of his International Boxing Federation title next against his IBF mandatory challenger Nadjib Mohammedi in a fight that will likely take place in the summer. Mohammedi has already been bypassed twice by Kovalev, so it’s not likely that we’ll be seeing Mohammedi waiting any further. Provided that Kovalev defeats Mohammedi, Kovalev could then be facing WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson later on this year in November or December 2015.

The fight date will depend on when the World Boxing Council orders the fight. Kovalev is now the WBC 175 pound mandatory challenger after his win over Pascal last Saturday. The WBC made that possible by making Kovalev a contender for the WBC title, even though he holds down the IBF, WBA and WBO titles.

The WBC has started ranking other champions as contenders in order to force their champions to defend their titles against other world champions. This makes for a lot more interesting fights, but it also will put Stevenson in a position where he’s going to need to decide whether he wants to hold onto his WBC title bad enough to fight Kovalev.

Stevenson told HBO commentator Bernard Hopkins last Saturday night that he’ll fight Kovalev. Further, Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel said that they want the Kovalev fight, and that they’re waiting for the WBC to say when the fight will be taking place.

Pascal and Kovalev will no doubt be facing each other again in the future once the smoke clears from the Kovalev-Stevenson fight. It’s possible that we could see Kovalev and Pascal facing each other in 2016.



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