By Chris Williams: A unification match between IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins (55-6-2, 32 KOs) and WBO 175 pound champion Sergey Kovalev (24-0-1, 22 KOs) will be taking place in November on HBO, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.
The fight hinges on Kovalev getting past #10 WBO Blake Caparello (19-0-1, 6 KOs) in their fight this Saturday night on HBO from the Revel Resort, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA.
“I am told BHop-Kovalev is agreed to for November on HBO pending a Kovalev victory on Saturday,” Rafael said on his twitter.
Hopkins had wanted to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, but that fight doesn’t look doable at this moment. Hopkins reportedly isn’t under contract with Showtime, so a fight against Kovalev is one that can possibly take place on HBO. Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya is patching things up with HBO, and that means that we’ll likely be seeing Golden Boy Promotions fighters once again on that network.
How that potentially effects Showtime is unclear. If they have to share Golden Boy’s fighters with HBO it could thin out some of the talent. You would hope that this doesn’t lead to mover Rod Salka vs. Danny Garcia fights on Showtime in the future because that would be a huge buzz-kill.
Hopkins recently took interest in fighting Kovalev after seeing his fight against Cedric Agnew last March. Kovalev didn’t look all that fast in that fight, and he was hit frequently by Agnew and cut over both eyes. Kovalev also looked tired by the 6th round. Fortunate for him he was able to get Agnew out of there in the 7th, but it might have been messy had the fight gone deep.
Hopkins is going to make it tough on Kovalev to try and land his big power shots, and he’s going to be nailing him with shots. Kovalev will need to take some of the power off of his shots if he wants to land against Hopkins, because if he loads up all night against him, he’ll be missing frequently and will end up getting countered all night. But once Kovalev takes the power off of his shots, he’ll be an average fighter without any real advantages against Hopkins.
I think we could very well see an upset in this fight with 49-year-old Hopkins beating Kovalev and exposing him in front of the boxing world. You can’t really call it an upset though because Kovalev has never beaten anyone that you can call a good fighter at this point. He has a win over former WBO light heavyweight champion Nathan Cleverly and that’s about it.
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