IBF grants Kovalev’s request for an exception, Pascal fight is on!

By Boxing News - 12/12/2014 - Comments

kovalev5By Dan Ambrose: The International Boxing Federation (IBF) has granted Main Event fighter IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) an exception to bypass his IBF mandatory challenger #1 IBF Nadjib Mohammedi (36-3, 22 KOs) in order for Kovalev to face former WBC light heavyweight champion Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs) on March 14th at a venue still to be determined.

This is good news because Kovalev vs. Mohammedi is a total mismatch, and it would be too easy of a fight for Kovalev. Mohammedi has been blown out twice during his career in early knockout losses to Dmitry Sukhotsky and Thierry Karl.

Mohammedi was also beaten by former Kovalev knockout victim Nathan Cleverly by a 12 round unanimous decision in 2010. Mohammedi’s knockout loss to Sukhotsky, who will be facing Adonis Stevenson on December 19th, took place in 2011.

“Great news!! @Main_Events has informed me that the IBF has granted @KrusherKovalev request for an exception. Kovalev-@jeanpascalchamp is on!,” Dan Rafael said on his Twitter.

The Kovalev-Pascal fight allows Kovalev the opportunity to clean out one of the few remaining contenders in the 175 pound division. Once Kovalev gets Pascal out of the way then the only guys that will be left for Kovalev to fight are Adonis Stevenson, Artur Beterbiev and Jurgen Braehmer.

The rest of the guys will be fighters not even worth fighting. At that point, Kovalev will need to look to either the super middleweight or cruiserweight division if he wants to find a big name for him to fight. The light heavyweight division will be totally cleaned out by him once he gets those guys out of the way.

Fighting Pascal is kind of a late move for Kovalev because Pascal hasn’t done anything in the light heavyweight division in many years. It’s been four years since Pascal defeated a big name in Chad Dawson in their fight in 2010 that was halted on a cut in the 11th round.

Pascal’s career has kind of done downhill since then with two poor performances against Bernard Hopkins and fights against Aleksy Kuziemski, George Blades, Lucian Bute and Roberto Feliciano Bolonti. Pascal’s fight against Bolonti ended up as a 2nd round no contest last Saturday night after Pascal hit Bolonti on the break in the 2nd round.

Pascal still has very good hand speed, but it remains to be seen whether he can handle getting hit by a big puncher like Kovalev for 12 rounds. This is like Pascal fighting a better version of Carl Froch. We saw what happened with Pascal when he fought Froch in 2008.

Pascal fought well for about 4 rounds and then got wore down by Froch’s head shots in the last eight rounds of the fight. Kovalev hits even harder than Froch, and it’s hard to imagine Pascal being able to take those kinds of punishing shots without getting knocked out. Most likely, Pascal will go into a shell and fight defensively for the last 8 rounds of the fight and wind up losing by a lopsided 12 round decision.

Kovalev is coming off of a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision over IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins in a fight that was a very easy one for Kovalev.



Comments are closed.