By Jim Dower: WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey ‘Krusher’ Kovalev (31-2-1, 27 KOs) says he’s not looking past his fight this Saturday night against Igor Mikhalkin (21-1, 9 KOs) at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Kovalev is a big favorite to defeat the 32-year-old Mikhalkin, who has not exactly been burning through the division’s top fighters since he turned pro in 2007. Mikhalkin is on the same level as Kovalev’s last opponent Vyacheslav Shabranskyy in terms of talent and his chances of winning.
You can’t blame Kovalev if he were overlooking Mikhalkin, because this is not a major league talent. Mikhalkin hasn’t been fighting top level opposition. He did step it up once in his career against Aleksy Kuziemsky in 2010, but he was beaten. Mikhalkin went back to taking on soft opposition after that defeat, and he’s done well in winning his last 10 fights.
The reason why it’s been so slow for Mikhalkin to pick up ranking is obvious. The sanctioning bodies frequently don’t rank fighters highly when they’re being spoon fed mediocre opposition. Had Mikhalkin been fighting good opponents for the last 8 years, he would have likely already gotten a world title long ago. Of course, the flip-side is if Mikhalkin had fought good fighters, he probably would have lost, and he still wouldn’t be no getting a world title shot. He did it the best way he could by taking on obscure fighters and padding his record.
HBO Championship Boxing will be televising the Kovalev vs. Mikhalkin fight, as well as the arguably far more interesting fight in the co-feature between WBA World light heavyweight champion Dmitry Bivol and Sullivan Barrera. That’s the good fight on the card, and it should be an action packed one. Kovalev-Mikhalkin has mismatch written all over it.
It’s a showcase fight for Kovalev, who is still trying to rebuild his career after back to back losses to Andre Ward. Kovalev won the vacant WBO belt recently in fighting fringe contender Shabranskyy in what was originally supposed to be a tune-up fight/confidence booster. It turned into a title fight when Ward vacated the world Boxing Organization belt.
”He’s a southpaw. That’s already a little uncomfortable, because for a long time I haven’t fought a southpaw. Also his style can be uncomfortable for me too,” Kovalev said to boxnation.com. ”Also, he’s Russian. In Russia, mentally we don’t have a step back. If for you [it’s] very hard, you cannot say, ‘No, stop. I don’t want to fight anymore’. He will be fighting from first bell to last bell, because he’s motivated right now. He’s never fought for a real world title,” Kovalev said.
Beating Mikhalkin probably won’t get Kovalev back to where he was with his fans before he was twice beaten by Ward. For Kovalev to get back to where he was, he’s going to need to start facing good opposition again. That means no more fights against guys like Shabranskyy and Mikhalkin. Instead, Kovalev needs to have his promoters at Main Events set him up with a unification fight against Adonis Stevenson, Artur Beterbiev or Bivol. If those fights can’t be made, then Kovalev should defend his WBO title against Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Anthony Yarde, Marcus Browne, Joe Smith Jr. and Badou Jack.