Sergey Kovalev put in a dominating, brutal performance at the weekend, arguably trumping his previous performance in their March 2015 encounter. Jean Pascal was mercifully saved by new trainer Freddie Roach following a hellacious 7th round, and I don’t think many fight fans would have protested the decision to retire his battered fighter.
You can catch HBO’s Kovalev vs Pascal II Highlights below:
Kovalev is a beast at Light Heavyweight, loves to fight, and – according to the post fight interview – probably chose to deliberately extend Jean Pascal’s punishment. (Which kinda’ sounds like what Gennady Golovkin suggested he did following his mauling of David Lemieux last October.)
From the first bell, Kovalev vs Pascal II was a case of predator and prey; there was never any question over the roles being acted out here. Kovalev was methodical and ruthless as he walked down Pascal, knocking down his out-powered foe with a ram-rod jab in just the 1st round (though a count was not officially given).
Pascal found his feet and, despite winging in some infrequent looping hooks, was never able to compete in this affair. Kovalev was too strong on the front foot and held no respect for Pascal whatsoever. Pascal was out-boxed, out-gunned, was susceptible to Kovalev’s economical attacks, and was blasted on the ropes multiple times.
Pascal deserves a lot of credit for sticking in the fight as long as he did, but didn’t look to have improved his repertoire under Roach’s tutelage. To be fair, the pair haven’t been working together long and, really, Kovalev isn’t the kind of opponent Pascal was ever going to test new tricks on. Still, Pascal is one tough fighter, and in good hands with Roach in tow.
Kovalev now improves to 29 wins, 26 knockouts, no defeats, 1 draw, defending his WBO, WBA and IBF Light Heavyweight titles. Meanwhile Pascal drops to 30 wins, 17 knockouts, 4 defeats, 1 draw.
Post fight, Kovalev expressed no respect for Pascal, refusing to offer the sportsmanlike embrace fighters usually make. Seriously, the bad blood remained…well, bad. Oh, and after Kovalev called Adonis Stevenson ‘Adonis Chickenson’, Stevenson leapt into the ring to get all pushy and shovey. Stevenson looked to be more posturing than anything, but Kovalev’s chicken clucking was pretty impressive.
HBO cameras caught the post-fight action:
So what’s next? Word in the rumour mill is that a meeting with Andre Ward could be in the works for November. Now that I’d love to see. Readers, how would you call a mega matchup like that? Would the ‘Krusher’ wipe the floor with Stevenson? Or would Stevenson rebrand himself as the ‘real champ’ by taking out Kovalev?
