Sergey Kovalev Setting Up for a Long Reign as Boxing's Best Light Heavyweight

When it comes to light heavyweights, Adonis Stevenson is the man who beat the man.

When it comes to the best light heavyweights, Sergey Kovalev has become a little more.

The unbeaten Russian earned the WBO share of the empire 10 weeks after Stevenson erased consensus kingpin Chad Dawson, but the subsequent two years have seen his profile rise to a point where no less an expert than Bernard Hopkins told Bleacher Report that he expects the reign to last indefinitely.

“This is not me being a cheerleader with pom-poms all of a sudden,” said Hopkins, the former IBF/WBA champion who was dropped once and lost all 12 rounds against Kovalev last November.

“He’s not the typical straight-up-and-down European who moves like he got stilts on his legs. That’s the surprising part of fighting him. And he’s going to get better. That’s the scary part for his opponents.

“If he adapts more stuff with that and then learns more with the style that he’s been successful with, he’s going to be a really hard person to beat in years, not fights.”

Both Stevenson and Kovalev have defended five times since their initial title wins in 2013, but the prolonged haggling over a possible unification fight—and the public perception that it’s Stevenson who’s been keeping it from happening—has fueled the 32-year-old’s leapfrog to the top of the charts.

Ring Magazine recognizes Stevenson as its light heavyweight champion, though Kovalev—who’s listed as the No. 1 contender at 175 pounds—is No. 7 on the pound-for-pound list, while Stevenson is unranked.

And presuming he gets past a mandatory defense against top-ranked IBF contender Nadjib Mohammedi on Saturday in Las Vegas (HBO, 10 p.m. ET), Kovalev’s plan is to keep facing all comers, whether that means Stevenson or not.

“I know that Stevenson is a piece of s--t,” he told Bleacher Report.

“All he says is ‘I want this fight. I want to fight this boxer. I don’t want to fight this boxer.’ He’s not a fighter. He’s a businessman. I’m a fighter. I’m going to fight any contender and any challenger who is coming to get my titles. My titles are my babies. I worked a long time to get them, and my goal now is to save them for as long as possible.”

When it comes to long runs in a weight class, Hopkins himself is an authority.

Now 50, he earned the IBF’s piece of the middleweight title as a 30-year-old in 1995, then defended it 19 times while adding the WBA, WBC and WBO belts through 2005.

A split-decision loss to Jermain Taylor ultimately cost him the hardware collection but preceded a reinvention that saw him rise to 175 pounds and win four titles before the one-sided beating by Kovalev.

“The only person who can beat Sergey is him right now,” Hopkins said.

“If you want these fights that might not ever happen, you’ve got to tell yourself that they’re going to happen, just to stay motivated. If it starts getting boring to you and you don’t tell yourself that, you’ve got a problem. At the end of the day, the guy that nobody expects to win is always the dangerous guy.”

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Kovalev and Stevenson are the top two fighters at 175, according to the Independent World Boxing Rankings, which rate everyone in division regardless of the sanctioning-body belts they possess.

Of the six others who round out the top eight, Kovalev and Stevenson have defeated four of them, and, presuming the favorite tops the underdog this weekend, Mohammedi would become victim No. 5.

Given that level of dominance, it’s no surprise the most intriguing options come from elsewhere.

Kovalev said two-belt middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and one-belt super middleweight boss Andre Ward are on his prospective hit list, presuming those foils make the trip to 175 for the showdown.

In fact, Hopkins sees Ward—who returned from a 19-month ring absence in June—as the perfect complement for a near-term mega-event.

“You’ve got to look at the amateur pedigree of Andre Ward. He’s a gold-medal winner,” Hopkins said.

“I don’t see it in a year or two years from now, I see it within a fight or two. I saw (Ward) look great in the last fight and he’ll look better in the next one and his competition is going to step up. That’s a superfight, definitely. As long as both guys continue to win, it’s absolutely a superfight.”