(David Spagnolo/Main Events) By Dan Ambrose: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) doesn’t rate his opponent for Saturday Nadjib Mohammedi (37-3, 23 KOs) as any kind of real puncher with power. Instead, Kovalev sees the 30-year-old Mohammedi as a boxer who will be looking to try and out-box him when they face each other on HBO Championship Boxing from the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada.
To be sure, even if he were a puncher, it would be a big mistake for Mohammedi to go straight at Kovalev from the opening bell trying to KO him. Kovalev, 6’2”, has too much size, too much power, and too good of a jab for Mohammedi to be mixing it up with him for any length of time.
We saw what happened to Mohammedi when he came out fast and tried to mix it up with Dmitry Sukhotsky in their fight in 2011. Mohammedi was knocked out in two rounds. It wasn’t just a lucky shot through. Sukhotsky overpowered Mohammedi in that fight when he elected to trade with him in the early going, and it was too easy to take him out.
Mohammedi has learned from the loss and fought carefully in his last 13 fights in winning all of them, albeit against weak opposition. On Saturday night, boxing fans will get a chance to see whether Mohammedi can use his boxing skills to outbox a fighter as talented as Kovalev.
“Mohammedi is not a puncher but he knows how to box. He’s smart, sets traps and improvises a lot in the ring. He doesn’t just come forward but has good movement and angles,” said Kovalev.
Mohammedi picks his spots to look to load up on his shots. He’s technically not a puncher, but he’s got good power when he loads up on his shots. Mohammedi uses a lot of head movement, jabs frequently and moves in circles constantly around the ring. His jab is pretty good, and he attacks with combinations and then holds. He’s good at tying up his opponents to keep them from getting their shots off.
Kovalev will need to somehow deal with Mohammedi’s in and out style, and his holding because it’s not going to be as simple as his other fights. Mohammedi looks to spoil a lot and he’s not going to make it easy for Kovalev in this fight.
Kovalev wants to get Mohammedi out of the way so that he can move forward to bigger fights like a title defense against Andre Ward in 2016. Kovalev also still wants to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, who he doesn’t recognize as a world champion. Getting a fight against Stevenson may prove to be impossible while the two fighters are fighting on different networks. Stevenson is with Showtime, and it’s not likely he’ll be able to fight Kovalev on HBO until his contract runs out.
“I don’t want to speak about him [Stevenson] at all because he’s not a real champion. He got lucky once against Chad Dawson when Dawson dropped his title against Andre Ward,” Kovalev said.
The thing that is working against Kovalev and Stevenson facing each other in the future is Stevenson’s age. He’s 38 now, and by the time the two fighters do face each other in the future, Stevenson will likely be over 40, and Kovalev won’t get as much credit beating him then as he would right now while he’s still in his 30s and at the top of his game.
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