Ranking the Best Opponents for Sergey Kovalev's Next Fight
Well, that was pretty impressive, wasn’t it?
Of course, while Sergey Kovalev may have “catapulted right to the top of the boxing world”—in the estimation of promoter Kathy Duva—with Saturday’s one-sided thrashing of light heavyweight unification foe Bernard Hopkins, he also might have made Ms. Duva’s job a touch more difficult when it comes to finding opponents willing to step in the ring with the undefeated Russian “Krusher.”
Many had assumed the 49-year-old Hopkins was a touch off his rocker for taking up the challenge of a guy who had 13 straight wins by stoppage, and the 31-year-old Kovalev proved them prescient by dominating nearly every second of his first career trip over the 12-round championship distance.
Clearly in his prime at 31, Kovalev now holds three major parts of the 175-pound title collection—the World Boxing Organization belt he’d walked into Boardwalk Hall with, along with the International Boxing Federation and World Boxing Association trinkets that he swiped from Hopkins’ possession.
Logic would dictate a match with the other holder of a significant slice of the divisional pie (spoiler alert … his title belt is green), but we all know boxing has never been accused of being the most logical of sporting environments. Nevertheless, upon surveying the landscape for those fighters who’d make the most (dollars and) sense as Kovalev’s next in line, our top choices are on the next several pages.
Take a moment to drop your suggestions in the comments section.
4. Jean Pascal
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He was winless in a pair of bouts in his home province against Hopkins in 2010 and 2011, but that didn’t stop Haitian-born Quebec resident Jean Pascal from suggesting prior to Saturday that he was pulling for Kovalev because Hopkins was “probably going to try to run” from a third meeting between the two.
“Kovalev is a good boxer, and I want him to win,” Pascal told Lem Satterfield of The Ring. “That’s because, if he wins, then I think that I have a better chance of getting a shot at him. But if Hopkins wins, then it’s going to be harder to get a shot at him because Hopkins knows that he got lucky.”
Iffy logic aside, it’s not as if Pascal is entirely without street cred for such a fight.
He handed Chad Dawson, then the IBO and WBC champion, his first professional loss in 2010 and was a one-sided winner over former 168-pound champ Lucian Bute in his most recent fight on Jan. 18. He’s scheduled to face Don George on Dec. 6 in Montreal and would presumably be available if Kovalev follows through on an assumed intention to return for the first time as a three-belt champ in March.
It's not the most interesting fight out there, but Duva and Co. could do a lot worse.
3. Gennady Golovkin
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Pascal’s a fine fighter, but if Kovalev and his people want to ratchet up the interest level a little, they need look no further than a reigning middleweight titleholder who’s finding similar difficulty in getting guys willing to share a dance card.
Gennady Golovkin is another Eastern European export with a long stretch of dominant performances and a short list of big names willing to do more than talk about fighting him.
Hopkins and his promoter, Oscar De La Hoya, implied he’d have been next on the list had Hopkins won Saturday’s fight, and they kept the dream alive even after the loss, presuming the old-timer decides to continue in the aftermath of the worst beating of his long career.
As for intrigue, look no further than trainer Abel Sanchez’s suggestion that Kovalev was “afraid of Golovkin when he was in the ring” during some sparring sessions in 2013.
As Russian-Kazakh encounters go, this one’s a surefire barnburner.
2. Andre Ward
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Let's face it, Andre Ward needs to fight somebody. Anybody.
The top dog at super middleweight for as long as most folks care to remember, Ward has been in the ring just one time—for a nearly 12-round whitewash of an overmatched Edwin Rodriguez—in the two years, two months and one day since he demolished then-175-pound boss Dawson in 10 rounds.
And what better way to reintroduce yourself to the viewing public than another champion vs. champion showdown against another light heavyweight elite who shares your HBO broadcast allegiance?
Kovalev’s promoter, Duva, seems sold, having referred to the match as “inevitable” earlier this year.
“It’s gonna happen someday,” she told BoxingScene.com’s Bill Emes.
Go ahead and get it done, Kathy. We’re sold, too.
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1. Adonis Stevenson
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As mentioned earlier, the linear “win this one, advance to the next one” concept that holds other pro sports together oftentimes means nothing in boxing, where matchups are just as often dictated by who works with whom and who’s willing to pay how much.
Such is the case with a would-be ultimate unifier with Adonis Stevenson, who can claim the legitimate “beat the man who beat the man” status as the division’s rightful kingpin, but he did little to curry favor with fans when he stepped away from a surefire Kovalev match and signed on with Showtime.
He did so in order to get his own fight with Hopkins before Kovalev got to him, but B-Hop flipped the script by ditching Stevenson’s stall tactics to cross network lines and head back to HBO himself.
It’s going to take a fair bit of back-room television dealing to get this one back on course, but Stevenson recently claimed he wanted Saturday’s winner. And if the power brokers on both sides of the equation are indeed willing, there’s plenty of monetary reason to get it done.
Channeling Carl Weathers from the early scenes of Rocky, just imagine: Superman vs. the Krusher, "sounds like a damn monster movie.”
Start printing tickets and watch them line up around the block waiting to get in.
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