By Dan Ambrose: This Saturday night’s match-up between IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) and Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs) will be determined by the conditioning of the two fighters, says Pascal’s strength and conditioning trainer Angel Heredia.
He notes that both fighters have excellent punching power, excellent boxing skills, and more than enough hand speed to get the job done. However, Heredia thinks it’s going to come down to the conditioning of the two fighters when they fight each other at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
“Pascal, you know, his style is very different. Jean Pascal, you might hit him and he gets turned on like a machine. He comes back on and he’s going to keep punching you. Kovalev, on the other hand, is also a guy, a warrior, that goes forward, so I see a huge battle,” Heredia said via Fighthype.com.
The conditioning will only come into play in this fight if it goes to the later rounds. If it does, then there’s a good chance that we’ll see Kovalev roll over Pascal like a steamroller like he’s been doing in his recent fights. Kovalev has been blasting guys out in 7 rounds or less throughout his entire 7 year pro career.
Kovalev was recently extended to the 12th round by 50-year-old Bernard Hopkins last November. However, that was a case of Hopkins playing it safe and going into the survival mode after getting dropped in the 1st round.
Had Hopkins fought to win by fighting hard, he’d likely have been knocked out as well. Pascal is going to need to take a lot of big punches if he wants to make it to the later rounds of the fight, because he’s probably not going to be able to make it to the 9th by him going toe-to-toe with Kovalev.
I really don’t think conditioning will come into play in this fight. I think this fight is going to come down to whether Pascal can take Kovalev’s big power punches or not. If he can then he has a chance of maybe winning some rounds late in the fight, but I don’t think he’s going to be winning any rounds in the first three fourths of the fight, because Kovalev is going to be nailing him hard with a lot of big punches.
If Pascal was a young, active fighter with a great chin, huge power and excellent mobility, he’d have a chance of giving Kovalev problems. But Pascal isn’t young, he definitely hasn’t been active, and he doesn’t move as well as he used to. He’s got decent power and good hand speed, but those assets probably won’t be enough for him to get the victory.
“I see two guys trying to really finish the fight early, but conditioning is going to determine the outcome of the fight in the later rounds,” Heredia said. “If it goes above 9 rounds, then it will be a tremendous factor on who will win the fight.”
Kovalev may have the psychological advantage in this fight over Pascal. On Thursday, Kovalev shoved Pascal during a face off when Pascal grabbed Kovalev’s cap and tried to tilt it back. On Friday at the weigh-in, Pascal chose not to have a face-off with Kovalev. The question you have to ask here is whether Kovalev has Pascal afraid of him now.
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