By Allan Fox: Sergey ‘Krusher’ Kovalev was badly exposed by unbeaten Eleider ‘Storm’ Alvarez (24-0, 12 KOs) last Saturday night in losing by a 7th round knockout in his second defense of his World Boxing Organization light heavyweight title at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Alvarez landed a hard right hand the sent a hurt Kovalev down on the canvas in the 7th. Kovalev got up and was put down with a left-right combination for Alvarez for the second knockdown of the round. Kovalev was knocked down by a hard right hand from Alvarez for the third knockdown of the round. The fight was stopped at that point.
Kovalev’s promoter Kathy Duva expects him to use his rematch clause to face Alvarez in a rematch. She points out that Sergey was doing well until getting hurt in the 7th by Alvarez.
“Look, I thought Sergey dominated the fight – until we got to the seventh,” Duva said via Yahoo Sports News. “I thought he was tremendous up until that point. He has the rematch [clause], and I’d be surprised if he didn’t [exercise it].”
Kovalev has little choice but to use the rematch clause. If he retires, boxing fans are going to question his courage and call him a quitter. If Kovalev elects to fight someone else, the fans are still going to question his courage due to him not facing Alvarez. Kovalev can get a good payday fighting Alvarez again, as there are a lot of boxing fans interested in seeing it.
Alvarez fought well in rounds 4, 5 and 6 in taking some big shots, and answering back with his own. With his superior size and outside game, Kovalev was still getting the better of Alvarez going into the 7th. Things were looking bad for Alvarez heading into that round. Kovalev was still punching with major power, and not showing signs of being tired.
The 35-year-old Kovalev looked older than his years in getting dropped three times in round seven before the referee David Fields stepped in to stop the bout. Despite there being only one year between Kovalev and the 34-year-old Alvarez, it looked like a lot more separated them in the youth department. Kovalev’s problem was these issues:
• Lack of lateral movement
• Inability to avoid Alvarez’s punches
• Gassing out
• Poor punch resistance
Andre Ward had previously exposed Kovalev twice in beating him in 2016 and 2017. Even though Kovalev arguably won the first fight with Ward in 2016, he was still exposed in the fight for his poor stamina and his inability to handle body shots.
HBO commentator Roy Jones Jr. believes that Kovalev just got old, and he didn’t have the youth to respond to the shots that Alvarez was hitting him with.
“Kovalev got caught,” Jones said to Fighhype. “Sometimes that happens. But I don’t think he was the guy that he used to be. I think age showed up tonight. When I saw him jabbing and missing shots, that showed age is starting to show. The ‘Krusher’ looked like an old man. He gave his best. He tried to get the knockout, but it didn’t happen. When a guy hits you and it takes you five seconds to come back, it shows you’re getting old in the ring. His body got old. He’s got the heart of a champion, but his body got old,” Jones said.
The difference last Saturday for Kovalev was he wasn’t facing Shabranskyy and Mikhalkin. Those guys couldn’t handle the punching power from Kovalev. Alvarez was able to take the best shots Kovalev threw for seven rounds. Looking at Alvarez’s face afterwards, one could tell that he had taken a beating in lasting seven rounds against Kovalev. Eleider took major punishment to get as far into the fight to expose his poor conditioning.
“It’s not like Kovalev got beat by a bum. Kovalev got beat by a great fighter. This guy [Alvarez] has been ranked number one for five years, and no one wanted to fight him. Those guys [Vyacheslav Shabranskyy and Egor Mikhalkin] weren’t capable of knocking him out. The guy he fought tonight was the first guy since the Ward fight that he was facing someone capable of knocking him out and he got knocked out,” Jones said.
We didn’t know how good Alvarez was before last Saturday night because the best guys he’d fought during his career were past his prime Lucian Bute and Isaac Chilemba. Adonis Stevenson never fought him. Instead, he gave Alvarez step aside money not to have to fight him. It’s understandable that Stevenson wouldn’t want to fight Alvarez because he would have been a real threat to him. As good as Stevenson has looked in the last six years, I’m not too sure that Alvarez would have beaten him. Alvarez would have been a tough.
Like a lot of boxing fans, Jones gave Kovalev no credit for his wins over Igor Mikhalkin and Shabranskyy. He feels that Alvarez was the first high caliber opponent for Kovalev since his losses to Ward. Kovalev had a lot of fighters worried about him during his best years in the light heavyweight division. Ward’s two wins over Kovalev exposed all that.
It’s good thing that Alvarez finally got his offense in gear in the 7th round. If he hadn’t, he might not have lasted too much longer with the way that Kovalev was hitting him.
“It was a two-round combo that I have been throwing my whole career and we worked on it in camp,” Alvarez said. “I have always practiced that in camp and we thought it would work in this camp.”
In looking at Alvarez’s career record, you wouldn’t think that he’s much of a power puncher, but he’s been sitting down on his shots a lot more lately. When Alvarez faces guys with power and speed, he’s a lot more hesitant to throw power shots. In Alvarez’s fights against Jean Pascal and Isaac Chilemba, he was less willing to go after those guys because he kept getting hit hard by them. Against a slower guy in Lucian Bute, Alvarez stopped him in the 5th round in 2017 and sent him into retirement. Alvarez has respectable punching power. Kovalev found out the hard way the kind of power that Alvarez has going for him.