Why Sergey Kovalev Is the Scariest Boxer on the Planet

The easiest way to say it is this: Sergey Kovalev is the one fighter in the world I would want around in a zombie apocalypse situation.

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Fans of AMC’s hit television series The Walking Dead know it better than anyone. If the dead rise and start using their chompers on the living like we’re all walking flesh kabobs, you better find a group with a violent, strong and scary leader.  

That or you’ll join the zombies faster than Manny Pacquiao can shadow-box.

And that's pretty fast, people. 

That’s what I told Kovalev’s promoter, anyway, and she agreed.

“You’re right,” said Kathy Duva. “He’s a bad [dude].”

Duva laughed when I told her that Kovalev was the one fighter in the world who I frequently interviewed who also secretly had me wondering if he was thinking about what my blood might look like splattered on the floor or perhaps what my spine would feel like in his hand.

I expected her to tell me I’m crazy, or maybe even be a little offended by it. After all, Kovalev is polite and well-mannered when we speak. He smiles when he’s asked questions and laughs at jokes, even if he doesn’t understand them or think they’re funny.

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But Duva told me my summation of the man was correct. If the world turns upside down because zombies suddenly go from America’s favorite outlandish fiction to a gruesomely destructive reality, Duva said my best bet was to find Kovalev and stay close.

“From the first moment I saw him, my thought was this is the baddest man on the planet. He’s it. I know he is.”

Duva and I discussed the other contender for the honor. Bleacher Report’s Jonathan Snowden surmised fairly recently that middleweight monster Gennady Golovkin might be the world’s scariest fighter. Snowden would know. In addition to covering the sweet science, he covers mixed martial arts and professional wrestling, too. If people are punching or kicking each other, Snowden is watching.

And if there’s a fighter out there who scares Snowden more than Golovkin, he didn’t let on about it last summer:

"

I imagine what it must be like to step into the ring with "GGG," this 160-pound meat cleaver. The rapid heartbeat, the crippling self-doubt. It's all unthinkable for Golovkin, who told me he's never, even in the moment, thought any boxer standing across from him was perhaps the better man… . It's this extreme confidence that makes him so dangerous. His confidence is beguiling and more than a little intimidating. He walks through opponents' punches in what can only be described as a dismissive manner. If he gives off an air of invincibility, it's only because he's never been given a reason to doubt.

"

But Golovkin is no Kovalev.

He’s scary, but I don’t get the impression he ponders bodily harm to me when we speak. In fact, one gets the sense in his presence that the smile on Golovkin is real and that he’s a genuinely nice person.

He isn’t secretly hoping zombies take over the world so he can bash in heads in more places than just the prizefighting ring. He’s never wondered what my blood looks like or how my spine feels.

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That isn’t to say he wouldn’t beat me within an inch of my life if necessary. He would. But he doesn’t seem inclined to it unless I or anyone was suddenly foolhardy enough to become his next scheduled opponent.

But Kovalev? He even gives Duva the heebie-jeebies.

“He has an edge about him that even Golovkin doesn’t have. There’s just this edge in him where it’s like ‘I hope he doesn’t turn it on me.’ It’s almost evil, and that’s what’s so delicious about him.”

Both men are outstanding fighters with great similarities about them once the bell rings. Both are stalking predators. They are excellent boxers with great feet. They are always in position to punch with great force, and they inflict blunt force trauma on their opponents better than anyone else in boxing.

Don’t let anyone tell you these men are brawlers. They’re not. They fight with as much skill and precision as anyone else in the sport. They just use it to be aggressive.

Both are worthy of consideration in the debate about boxing’s scariest fighter. But since they seem so close to each other as prizefighters inside the ropes, it just makes sense to me to think about who I’d want by my side if a horde of mindless flesh-eaters were headed my way.

The smiling Golovkin who (according to a press release) takes his beaten opponents out for drinks afterward?

Or Kovalev, the man who consistently works something Grantland’s Rafe Bartholomew called “pelvic-thrust feints” into his offensive craft?

Mark me down for Team Kovalev, and Duva said so, too.

“He would enjoy it, too. That’s part of it. He’d like it.”

Unless otherwise noted, all quotes were obtained firsthand.