March 28, 2024

Sergey Kovalev 30 (26 KO’s)- 2 (1 KO)- 1 seems to be at an awkward point in his boxing career, after  a fast rise, capturing three of the four major belts in three years beating fighters such as: Nathan Cleverly, Jean Pascal twice and of course Bernard Hopkins, Kovalev has gone from being one of the hottest properties in boxing to a forgotten figure in recent times. After losing twice albeit controversially on both occasions to Andre Ward, he seems to have lost a certain fear factor that used to intimidate opponents before they even got into the ring with him. At 34 years of age Kovalev is certainly no spring chicken, and following the recent departures of Andre Ward and Bernard Hopkins from the division there is no mega- fight that Kovalev can look to in the near future, apart from old rival Adonis Stevenson that seems to be another fight destined to not happening due to a conflict of television contracts.

However, Kovalev does seem to be getting himself right back into the mix at world level even if the state of the division has changed vastly over the past few years with newcomers such as Badou Jack, Sullivan Barrera and fellow Russian Artur Beterbiev taking up the mantle, all are very dangerous fights for Kovalev but may be seen as high risk low reward for the near future.

Saturday’s fight against Vyacheslav Shabranskyy 19 (16 KO’s)- 1 (1 KO)-0 is not a fight that is expected to give Kovalev nearly the trouble that the top other fighters in the division would. Although being a successful amateur, boxing for Ukraine in the Olympics Shabranskyy is very hittable, often leaving his chin wide open during exchanges, a factor that proved disastrous is his 7th round stoppage loss to previous Andre Ward victim Sullivan Barrera. This combined with relatively poor foot movement could mean trouble.

Shabranskyy prefers to give steady pressure to his opponent but I fear if he does this against Kovalev the fight will be over even faster, with Kovalev using superior foot movement and overall boxing ability to counter Shabranskyy’s wild hooks with long clean straight shots. Shabranskyy’s best game-plan would be to try and survive the opening rounds and pressure Kovalev later into the fight, and invest into body shots early on where Kovalev has been shown to be suspect.

Though Kovalev isn’t feared like he used to be this seems to be a relatively easy fight for the Russian with an early to mid- round knockout likely, but two high profile losses and a change of trainer means that fans will be watching if Kovalev still deserves his nickname of the krusher.

Prior to the main event Sullivan Barrera 20 (14 KO’s)- 1 (0 KO’s)-0 faces Felix Valera 15 (13 KO’s)-1 (0 KO’s)-0 with the main undercard fight between Jason Sosa 20 (15 KO’s)- 2 (2 KO’s)- 4 against entertaining Cuban 27 (17 KO’s)-2 (2KO’s)-0 in the Super Featherweight division.