Unified Light heavyweight Champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (27-0-1, 24 KOs) will be back in action this Saturday. He will be defending his world titles against his mandatory challenger Nadjib Mohammedi (37-3, 23 KOs) of France. The Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino, in Las Vegas, Nevada will be the site of the fight. HBO will air the event live.
When fans last saw Kovalev he took on his toughest challenge to date in former world champion Jean Pascal. The fight lived up to all the hype as it was Kovalev coming on strong early and then Pascal showing his heart to actually come back and stun Kovalev on a few occasions. In the end it was Kovalev’s power edge being the difference as he stopped Pascal in round 8 for the official TKO victory. There was a little controversy as some felt that the referee may have stopped the fight a tad prematurely. This left the door open for a rematch between the two. Pascal is fighting on the undercard. If he and Kovalev both win then it could be a possibility of them fighting again. They have been going at it recently on social networks so you could say the promotion has pretty much began.
Mohammedi is the forgotten man in all this. He is riding a 13 fight win streak but none of those victories was over anyone near the level of Kovalev. His most notable win was by TKO over Anatoliy Dudchenko in a world title eliminator last year. Mohammedi shares a common opponent with Kovalev in former world champion Nathan Cleverly. Mohammedi fought Cleverly tough dropping a closely fought decision. Kovalev destroyed Cleverly winning by fourth round TKO. Mohammedi pretty much summed his fight up with Kovalev by saying one way or the other the fight will not be going the full distance.
The fight many were hoping would happen for Kovalev before years end was vs. recognized lineal and WBC world light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson. Both sides have stated their reasons that the fight hasn’t been made. One roadblock is that Kovalev is an HBO contracted fighter and his side wants the fight obviously to be on that network. Stevenson is with Showtime and fought his last fight on the Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) series on NBC regular television. The PBC is headed by Stevenson’s powerful boxing advisor Al Haymon. There is still some time before 2015 comes to end. Perhaps this mega unification can still happen.
