(Photo Credit: David Spagnolo/Main Events)By Allan Fox: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) will be trying his best to entertain the fans tonight with his mismatch against challenger Nadjib Mohammedi (37-3, 23 KOs) on HBO from the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas.
Kovalev has his work cut out for him because his opponent is way out of his class in terms of talent, and he doesn’t have the kind of fighting style that will make it easy for Kovalev to knock him out unless he really goes after him to try and get him out of there fast.
Kovalev will be looking to make it exciting tonight, so that’s going to put him in a position where he’s going to have to take some risks against Mohammedi. We saw what happened to Kovalev in his last fight against Jean Pascal in which Kovalev was hurt on a couple of occasions in the fight. That wasn’t supposed to happen like that, but Kovalev ran into shots from Pascal by being aggressive. To his credit, he was able to continue fighting well and eventually get a knockout.
“Sergey was my fighter for a year and a half with eight fights and eight knockouts,” said his former trainer Abel Sanchez. “So the foundation we had is something he’s building on, and he’s doing very well with it. He’s the best light heavyweight in the world, and we prepared for that. We’re prepared to fight the best guy in the world. Nadjib has the right to be fighting for the title by fighting all the fights and moving up the rankings. Him being the mandatory, so now Sergey has to fight us,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez obviously knows all of Kovalev’s weaknesses from his time as his trainer. There are rumors that Gennady Golovkin used to get the better of Kovalev during their sparring sessions at Sanchez’s gym. If this is true, then Sanchez knows the kinds of things that Kovalev is vulnerable to. The only question is does Mohammedi have the talent needed for him to take advantage of Kovalev’s weaknesses?
Mohammedi does have the punching power to hurt Kovalev if he fights too aggressively, and it wouldn’t be surprising at all if we see a shock knockout in this fight with Kovalev getting stopped. It’s only a matter of time before Kovalev loses a fight by a knockout. He’s too wide open in his fights due to his tendency to shoot for knockouts. Kovalev has been able to get away with it thus far because he’s not fought anyone really good besides Pascal.
Kovalev’s other wins over guys like Nathan Cleverly weren’t big enough wins to tell you something. The only way fans are going to find anything out about Kovalev is when he gets inside the ring with guys like Adonis Stevenson, Andre Ward, Juergen Braehmer, and Artur Beterbiev. But it might not take those guys to beat him. We might see Mohammedi do the job on Kovalev tonight. It would be a big blow to Kovalev’s career, but it won’t be that surprising to some because Kovalev’s style is too sloppy for him to stay unbeaten for long.
Comments are closed.