By Allan Fox: #1 WBO, #6 WBA Jean Pascal (29-3-1, 17 KOs) isn’t happy with the stoppage last night in his 8th round knockout loss to IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

Pascal was hurt badly in the 8th round with a left hand shot from Kovalev that sent Pascal falling against the ropes. The action was briefly stopped by referee Luis Pabon.

After the fight resumed, Pascal took two right hooks to the head, leaving the referee with no choice but to stop the bout. Pascal, who was still on his feet but looking badly hurt, feels that he could have kept fighting,

“That was a bull [expletive] stoppage,” Pascal said after the fight. “I was still in the fight. That was a tough fight for both of us, and I don’t know why the referee stopped the fight. I’m not happy. I was in the fight from round one. We should do it again and have a rematch. He was throwing bombs, but this is the sport of boxing; you give some, you get some. I was there; I was watching.”

In looking at the replay of the stoppage, it looks like Pabon did Pascal a big favor in stopping the fight when he did, because Pascal looked like he was about to get fully knocked out in the clinical sense had the referee Luis Pabon allowed it to continue a little longer.

Pascal had no defense at all to the two shots that Kovalev landed, and that’s not a good thing. Had the fight continued, Kovalev would have had target practice in landing whatever he wanted to against a defenseless Pascal, and the fight wouldn’t have likely last for more than 20 seconds if that.

A rematch between Pascal and Kovalev is definitely an option for the future though, because the fight was exciting enough to warrant a rematch at some point. However, Kovalev should take at least two or three fights before he faces Pascal again so that they can build it up more. Kovalev needs to fight for the WBC light heavyweight title against Adonis Stevenson, or someone else if Stevenson opts to vacate the title.

Once that fight is out of the way, Kovalev needs to fight guys like Artur Beterbiev, Nadjib Mohammedi, Edwin Rodriguez, Jurgen Braehmer, Eleider Alvarez, Isaac Chilemba and Andrezj Fonfara. A rematch against Pascal will be good once Kovalev has picked up some other wins. But Pascal needs to stay active and fight some other guys as well, and he needs to focus on fighting quality guys instead of the fighters that he’d been facing recently before getting a title shot against Kovalev.

In the three years leading up to last night’s fight, Pascal had beaten the following fighters: Aleksy Kuziemski, George Blades, Lucian Bute and Roberto Bolonti. That’s not good opposition, and it’s not surprising that Pascal seemed to run out of gas and wind up losing to Kovalev. Pascal hadn’t been facing good enough opposition to get him ready for a fight of this magnitude. If Pascal is serious about his career, he needs to step it up a level with his opposition, and fight on a more regular basis. Before last night, Pascal had fought four times in the last three years.