By Dan Ambrose: This Saturday night on March 14th, IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) will be putting his unbeaten record on the line against former WBC 175lb champion Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs) in a fight on HBO Championship Boxing from the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
For Kovalev, this is step two for him in beating the top fighters in the 175 pound division. Last November, Kovalev easily beat IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Bernard Hopkins by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision in the first step for Kovalev in capturing all the belts at light heavyweight.
Should Kovalev get past Pascal on Saturday, the only remaining fight for Kovalev at 175 will be against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson. However, that fight might prove to be difficult to be put together, given that Stevenson is with adviser Al Haymon and he fights on Showtime rather than HBO like Kovalev. But even if Kovalev never does get a chance to add the WBC title to his collection, he’ll have three of the four world titles at 175 and will be considered to be the best fighter in the division.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22owaSnsb54
Kovalev doesn’t even need to fight Stevenson to be seen as the best fighter in the division. As long as Kovalev has 3 of the 4 title belts at 175, he’ll be recognized as the best at that weight. It would be in Haymon and Stevenson’s best interest to take a fight with Kovalev if they don’t want to be seen as being a marginalized title holder.
It’s hard to say how good the 32-year-old Pascal is at this point in his career, because he hasn’t had a serious fight since his 12 round decision loss to Bernard Hopkins four years ago in 2011. Since then, Pascal has fought nothing but fluff opposition in beating Aleksy Kuziemski, George Blades, Lucian Bute and Roberto Bolonti.
Bute used to be a good fighter, but he looked like a shell of his former self in losing a one-sided fight against in January of 2014. Bute looked every bit as bad as John Molina did in his loss to Adrien Broner last Saturday. Bute simply wouldn’t throw any punches, and Pascal pretty much won the fight by default by Bute looking too timid to let his hands go.
There’s obviously a major rust factor for Pascal that he’ll need to try and overcome this Saturday if he wants to beat Kovalev, because Pascal has fought nothing but lower level opposition for the past four years. Pascal also hasn’t been exactly all that active either. He’s fought only four times in the last four years. That’s an average of one fight per years. The thing is he didn’t have a world title in his possession during those years. Pascal has simply been inactive fighter.
What we know about Pascal in the past from his fight against the hard punching Carl Froch in 2009, Pascal fought reasonably well for the first six rounds, but after that he fought poorly in the 2nd half of the fight in losing a 12 round decision. But this was a younger, more active version of Pascal. If Kovalev pushes the same kind of fast pace that Froch pushed on Pascal, it’s very likely Pascal will fold up and get stopped in the second half of the fight, if he makes it that far.
Kovalev has to push a fast pace if he wants to beat Pascal, because the Canadian based fighter likes to fight at a slow pace so that he can get plenty of rest breaks, and so that he can pot shot. Pascal is a lot like Adonis Stevenson with the way he likes to fight at a slow pace where he lands pot shots here and there to win rounds.
If Pascal is pushed hard to fight in an all-out war, he loses his form and his power and speed breaks down considerably. There’s a very good chance that Kovalev will KO Pascal if he forces Pascal into a war in the first three rounds of the fight. Pascal is like an old car that is being asked to be driven very fast for a long trip. The chances of Pascal breaking down will be considerable if Kovalev makes him fight hard and doesn’t let him slow down to get plenty or rest breaks.
Also on the Kovalev-Pascal card are the following fights:
Steve Cunningham vs. Vyacheslav Glazkov
Sergey Kovalev vs. Jean Pascal
Vasily Lepikhin vs. Isaac Chilemba
Dierry Jean vs. Carlos Manuel Reyes
Nadjib Mohammedi vs. Lee Campbell
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