By Jeff Aranow: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (29-0-1, 26 KOs) says that he would be open to fighting #1 IBF Sullivan Barrera (17-1, 12 KOs) in his next fight in the summer. Kovalev still doesn’t have an opponent scheduled for his next fight, and he’d be willing to face Barrera if that’s a fight that could happen.
Barrera was beaten by former WBA/WBC super middleweight champion Andre Ward (29-0, 15 KOs) last Saturday night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Kovalev was in attendance at that fight, and he was impressed with what he saw from Ward.
Kovalev and Ward are supposed to be fighting each other in November of this year on HBO Boxing provided that they both keep winning their fights before then. A fight between Kovalev and Barrera would give fans a chance to compare how Ward and Kovalev do against a common opponent. Barrera and Kovalev are both with Main Events promotional company, so making the fight would seem possible if Main Events wants to make the fight happen.
“If Sullivan Barrera is ready to fight against me in next fight, I’m ready too,” Kovalev said to Fighthype.com.
It’s probably not a good idea that Kovalev fights Barera, because if he beats him badly, he might scare Ward off and then there won’t be a fight between them in November.
That would be interesting fight to see both fighters have excellent punching power. Kovalev and Barrera are both are the same in terms of hand speed. Kovalev might be a little faster but not by much. The difference between them would be the 6’0” Kovalev being slightly taller than the 5’11” Barrera. The height wouldn’t be enough for Kovalev to have much of an advantage in that department. The main difference would be Kovalev having better power. He’d need more than his power to get through the Barrera fight because he’d be getting hit a lot by his big power shots.
Ward did a good job of getting out of the way of Barrera’s big punches last Saturday night in beating him by a lopsided 12 round decision. If Kovalev could do the same thing and possibly stop him, it would be pretty impressive. Ward never came close to stopping Barrera last Saturday night. Ward did knock Barrera down in the 3rd round of the fight, but that was a more of a flash knockdown than a case of him having hurt the Cuban fighter with his left hook shot.
Main Events might not want to put Barrera in with Kovalev immediately after a loss. It might be better for the promotional company to steer the fighters in different directions so that they don’t mess up one of their fighters by having him suffer back to back losses. A second loss right now would potentially hurt Barrera’s career. He probably needs to be brought back in learning fights so that he can improve upon the mistakes he made in the Ward fight.
Barrera didn’t make a lot of mistakes in the fight. His main problem was he didn’t’ have the hand speed necessary for him to get the victory. Barrera said he wants to work on improving his hand speed before his next fight. I’m not sure if that’s something that he’ll be able to improve though.
Ward, 31, isn’t saying who he’ll be facing next in his summer fight. It would be interesting to see if he faces a better opponent than Barrera or if he chooses to take a weaker opponent.
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