By Allan Fox: A rematch between IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) and former WBC 175lb champion Jean Pascal (30-3-1, 17 KOs) is in the works for January 30th on HBO Championship Boxing from the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
The contracts haven’t been signed yet for the Kovalev-Pascal rematch. According to Dan Rafael, the Kovalev vs. Pascal rematch is part of a new three-fight contract with HBO. Kovalev will be fighting the well-known Pascal first, and then fighting in the summer next year against an opponent still to be determined.
That fight could be against the Adonis Stevenson, the WBC light heavyweight champion. The third fight on Kovalev’s contract with HBO will be against Andre Ward in late 2016. Instead of Pascal, Kovalev’s promoter Kathy Duva wanted a fight between Kovalev and WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson.
“We tried very hard, through (Pascal promoters) Jean Bedard and Pierre Duc of InterBox during recent weeks, to come to an agreement for (champion Adonis) Stevenson to fight Pascal in December or January, and for the winner to fight Sergey in the spring of 2016,” Duva said via ESPN.com’s Dan Rafael.
Stevenson’s promoter Yvon Michel “seemed to like the deal,” according to Duva. However, Stevenson failed to commit to the deal. It’s unclear why. It would have been a tough two fights for the 38-year-old Stevenson to have to beat Pascal and Kovalev in back to back fights.
For Stevenson, he’s had it so easy for the past year since his fight against Andrzej Fonfara. Since then, Stevenson has beaten Dmitry Sukhotsky, Sakio Bika and Tommy Karpency.
“Sadly, the deadline has passed without acceptance from the Stevenson (camp),” Duva said. “So Sergey and Pascal must move on and we are now talking about Sergey versus Pascal II in January.”
Kovalev, 32, already beat Pascal by an 8th round knockout last March in Montreal. A rematch between them would seem to be pretty senseless given that there are a lot of other more qualified contenders for Kovalev to be fighting than him getting stuck in a rematch cycle with a fighter he already beat in 32-year-old Pascal.
Kovalev dominated Pascal with his jab, and the rematch will likely be the same thing.
HBO looks like they don’t want to take any chances of putting in some new blood to face Kovalv like Beterbiev, Sullivan Barrera, Eleider Alvarez or Yunieski Gonzalez. That would be more interesting to me than seeing Kovalev fight a guy that he knocked out only seven months ago in Pascal. If Kovalev KOs Pascal again, hopefully there’s not a third fight between the two fighter sin 2016.
Kovalev wanted to fight on November 28th in Moscow, Russia. The fight couldn’t take place due to Kovalev’s promoters at Main Events still in negotiations with HBO for the three-fight deal.
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