By Jim Dower: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (26-0-1, 23 KOs) successfully made weight on Friday in coming in at 174.3 pounds at the weigh-in for his fight against Jean Pascal (29-2-1, 17 KOs) on Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

Pascal, 32, weighed in right at the light heavyweight limit of 175 pounds.

The major question for the Kovalev-Pascal fight is whether Pascal will play it safe and fight to survive or whether he comes out actually trying to win the fight. If Pascal fights passively, trying to nick rounds by pot shotting, then this fight could wind up a really boring one with Kovalev stalking a timid-looking Pascal around the ring all night long trying to take his head off with every punch.

Pascal’s got the foot speed to move all night long if he so chooses, and that’s certainly going to be an option for the 32-year-old fighter if he decides that he doesn’t want to stand in the pocket with Kovalev.

It’s hard to picture Pascal fighting Kovalev in the same way he did in his two fights against Bernard Hopkins and his one fight against Chad Dawson. Pascal was aggressive in those fights. The only reason he lost to Hopkins because he was simply out-boxed and outclassed by Hopkins.

Pascal has the punching power and hand speed to give Kovalev a lot of problems in this fight. Pascal doesn’t punch as hard as Kovalev, but his power is close enough to give the Russian fighter a lot of issues. The only question is whether Pascal has a strong chin to take Kovalev’s heavy shots in this fight.

Kovalev is going to be blasting away at Pascal to the head in each and every round. If Pascal decides he’s going to lean backwards to keep from getting hit to the head, then you can count on Kovalev unloading to Pascal’s body with massive shots. This will likely cause Pascal to drop his guard to protect his midsection. Once this happens, we’ll likely see Kovalev come back upstairs and nail Pascal with a head shot.

It’s still too early to tell how good a fighter Kovalev is because he’s not faced anyone that you can call a really good fighter. To be sure, Kovalev has a win over Hopkins, but that came at the end of Hopkins’ career and not when he was in his prime. Kovalev hasn’t faced Adonis Stevenson yet, and other than him and Pascal, there really isn’t any good fighters in the light heavyweight division.

The jury is still out on Artur Beterbiev in terms of whether he’ll shape up to be a good fighter in this weight class. For all we know, Pascal could wind up exposing Kovalev as an overhyped fighter.

In watching Kovalev fight, he looks very slow of hand, and his punches don’t look to be thrown with the kind of power that we see from some fighters like Stevenson. Kovalev’s lack of hand speed could really hinder him against Pascal on Saturday night, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he loses to the Canadian based fighter.

Weights for the card:

Sergey Kovalev: 174.3 lbs.
Jean Pascal: 175 lbs.
Vyacheslav Glazkov: 218.4 lbs.
Steve Cunningham: 209.6 lbs.