Sergey Kovalev: It’s a personal fight for me

By Boxing News - 01/27/2016 - Comments

kovalev (1)By Allan Fox: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) showed anger an annoyance at his final press conference for Saturday’s fight against Jean Pascal (30-3-1, 17 KOs) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Pascal hit the race card button by calling the 32-year-old Kovalev a racist, and he didn’t care for that comment too much. Kovalev said “Everybody knows what is true, but you will see on Saturday. It will be a personal fight for me.”
Pascal, 33, seems to be trying to gain an edge over Kovalev by trying to work him up by calling him a racist. I’m not sure if it’s going to work out well enough for Pascal to get a victory though. Kovalev was clearly the better fighter in their bout last year in March, which was won by Kovalev by an eighth round knockout.

The rematch seems to have taken place mainly due to economics than for any real sporting reason. The simple reality is there are few money fights in the light heavyweight division for Kovalev to take. That’s why it makes sense for him to fight Pascal.

Just how many times the boxing fans will bother to watch the two fighters face each other will depend on how competitive the fights are. If this fight is as competitive as the last one, then it won’t be surprising if the fans see a third fight between them in 2017, even if Kovalev wins this one.

Pascal is trained by Freddie Roach now, and they both believe the improvements that they’ll be making for the fight. Roach wants Pascal to box more, use in an out attacks, and not be stationary for Kovalev to land his bigger shots.

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This is definitely something that could work. Pascal used the wrong approach in the first fight by standing in front of Kovalev and electing to slug. Even when Pascal was on the outside, Kovalev was hitting him with jabs due to his longer reach. Pascal had his moments in the fight when he was landing his fast shots. He was able to connect repeatedly with nice punches to the head of Kovalev. The problem was Kovalev kept firing back with his own big shots, and Pascal had problems taking the power of the hard hitting Russian.

If Kovalev gets past Pascal on Saturday, he could have a chance for a unification fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson in his next fight. That would be a huge fight in Canada, and it would attract a lot of interest in the U.S. as well. Kovalev plans on ending 2016 with a fight against former WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward. That could be the biggest fight of Kovalev’s career, because many fans believe that Ward is a better fighter than him.

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The Kovalev-Pascal II fight will be televised on HBO Championship Boxing. It should attract good ratings numbers even though the fight is a rematch and not a needed one. The fans just looking for an entertaining fight will like this fight.



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