By Stanley White: WBO light heavyweight world champion Sergey ‘Krusher’ Kovalev (31-2-1, 27 KOs) will be making a soft first defense of his WBO title on March 3 against little known #7 IBF Igor Mikhalkin (21-1, 9 KOs) on HBO World Championship Boxing at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Mikhalkin is a similar fighter talent-wise to Kovalev’s last opponent Vyacheslav Shabranskyy. This is a lateral move for Kovalev in fighting Mikhalkin. It looks like HBO is fine with the match-up. I’m not sure if the boxing fans will if Kovalev vs. Mikhalkin turns out to be as competitive as Kovalev-Shabranskky.
HBO has been putting on some really poor fights lately. Kovalev vs. Mikhalkin is just the latest. I wish the people in the programming department would insist on better fights than this and what we’ve been seeing.
Here are some of the recent less than thrilling fights on HBO:
– Billy Joe Saunders vs. David Lemieux
– Miguel Cotto vs. Sadam Ali
– Miguel Cotto vs. Yoshihiro Kamegai
– Sergey Kovalev vs. Vyacheslav Shabranskyy
– Daniel Jacobs vs. Luis Arias
In the co-feature bout, WBA light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol will be defending against #1 WBA Sullivan Barrera. You can argue the Bivol-Barrera match should be the main event, not the Kovalev vs. Mikhalkin fight. That figures to be a mismatch as bad as Kovalev’s recent fight against Vyacheslav Shabranskyy on November 25.
HBO is willing to televise the Kovalev vs. Mikhalkin despite it being a mismatch. It’s unclear what they see in the fight that makes them want to televise the fight. On paper, Kovalev- Mikhalkin looks like a mismatch. Mikhalkin hasn’t done anything with his pro career that would suggest that he can beat Kovalev or even be competitive with him for any length of time. If HBO is going to green light Kovalev fighting guys like Mikhalkin, then he could hold onto his WBO title for a long period of time before he’s eventually beaten.
Kovaelv was beaten twice by Andre Ward recently. When Ward retired suddenly, the WBO 175 lb. title fell vacant. Before the WBO belt became vacant, Kovalev was fighting #10 WBO Vyacheslav Shabrabransky in a tune-up fight to get used to winning again. Once Andre Ward vacated the WBO belt upon retiring, Kovalev-Shabrankyy were given the OK to fight for the vacant WBO title by the sanctioning body.
It was a questionable move by the WBO to allow Kovalev’s fight with Shabranskyy be the vacant WBO 175 lb. title. After all, it was scheduled as a tune-up fight originally for Kovalev. Shabranskyy had just been knocked out by Sullivan Barrera. The next thing you know it, Shabranskyy is fighting Kovalev for the vacant WBO 175 lb. title. The highly ranked Oleksandr Gvozdyk was passed over by the WBO in allowing Kovalev-Shabranskyy to fight for the vacant WBO title.
The Kovalev- Mikhalkin fight is being finalized, according to Dan Rafael. Sullivan Barrera had the option to fight Kovalev on the card, but he turned it down.
Mikhalkin is a 10-year pro from Moscow, Russia. He now lives in Hamburg, Germany. Mikhalkin has fought mostly obscure opposition from Eastern Europe. When Mikhalkin attempted to step it up against better opposition against Aleksy Kuziemski in 2010, he was beaten by a 10 round unanimous decision. Since the loss to Kuziemski, Mikhalkin has won his last 10 fights in beating guys like Doudou Ngumbu (37-8, 14 KOs) (twice), Thomas Oosthuizen, Patrick Bois and Hakim Chioui. Kuziemski is a well-known light heavyweight, who has lost to the likes of Jean Pascal, Ngumbu, Dmitry Sukhotskiy, Nathan Cleverly and Juergen Braehmer. Kuziemski’s career ended in 2012 after a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision loss to Pascal.