“Fighting Words” — Kovalev Scores Another Over Stevenson

by David P. Greisman

Sometimes the business of boxing resembles the drama of the fights themselves.

The battle between light heavyweights Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev has yet to take place in the ring. Instead, there have been maneuvers and shifts in momentum outside of the ropes.

At first Stevenson sought victory via evasive tactics. Recent rounds have gone to Kovalev, first when a match was made between him and Bernard Hopkins, next when he dominated Hopkins to unify three world titles, and just last week with the announcement that he will face Jean Pascal in Montreal or Quebec City in March 2015.

That’s a big difference from the first few months of 2014. It’s even a significant difference from where things stood in July.

The year began with discussions of pairing the two power-punching 175-pounders with each other. Kovalev was to face Cedric Agnew in a keep-busy bout, while Stevenson, the division’s lineal champion, would defend against Andrzej Fonfara. But Stevenson soon signed with powerful boxing adviser Al Haymon, reportedly sought more money for the Fonfara fight and didn’t want to guarantee that he’d face Kovalev afterward. HBO executives didn’t want to accept those terms, and so Showtime swooped in and bid for Stevenson-Fonfara.

That brought Stevenson on a presumed path to facing titleholder Bernard Hopkins, defending against a legend and being paid well to do so. That also left Kovalev without a marquee matchup. He had his own title belt but sought to validate himself against the other top names in his division.

Kovalev beat Agnew in March. Hopkins defeated Beibut Shumenov in April to pick up a second world title. Stevenson dropped Fonfara early but soon had to come off the canvas himself, ultimately taking a hard-fought decision in May. Kovalev’s promoter, Main Events, sued Stevenson, the boxer’s promoter and management, Showtime and others. The company felt it had a legally binding agreement for a Stevenson-Kovalev fight. While it couldn’t force that bout to happen, the litigation was intended to pursue damages from the loss of income associated with that match.

Kovalev still needed to stay busy on HBO, trying to build his own star power without the assistance of someone else’s. He signed to face Blake Caparello, another underwhelming opponent.

Days before Kovalev-Caparello took to the ring on an August evening in Atlantic City, it was announced that Kovalev and Hopkins had signed for a unification bout. Suddenly Kovalev’s camp had scored one against Stevenson. Hopkins had soured on the negotiations with Stevenson and instead agreed to face Kovalev on HBO. (The lawsuit was dropped; Kovalev getting a big fight meant there weren’t damages to claim.) Kovalev needed less than two rounds to dispatch Caparello, and the Hopkins fight was on for November.

That left Stevenson without the big Hopkins fight he had so desired and indeed has left him without a top-tier opponent for the entirety of 2014. His only other bout this year besides the Fonfara victory will come on Dec. 19, when he defends against Dmitry Sukhotsky in Quebec City.

The making of Kovalev-Hopkins might not have been too big a deal had Hopkins won. There was nothing keeping Hopkins at HBO; he could’ve beaten Kovalev, returned to Showtime and met Stevenson in 2015. Kovalev dominated Hopkins, though, taking away one potential foe for Stevenson and putting additional pressure on him.

This sport isn’t wholly about prestige, however. There’s also the financial element, a significant factor for a 37-year-old fighter who had turned pro later in life and had only recently become a star. Stevenson’s team entered negotiations with Jean Pascal, a former light heavyweight champion and one of the bigger attractions in the province of Quebec.

In early November, Stevenson’s promoter, Yvon Michel, was quoted as saying that a fight with Pascal was being worked on for spring 2015.

It quickly became clear how those negotiations were going. Both camps took to the press to trash each other.

Toward the end of November, Stevenson told BoxingScene’s Ryan Burton that Pascal was ranked higher than he deserved to be, mocked the fact that Pascal was scheduled to fight on the undercard of a Lucian Bute bout (Bute got injured and Pascal became the main event), and was asking for too much money by wanting to split the revenue halfway.

Pascal’s adviser, Greg Leon, retorted in a conversation with this website’s Rick Reeno, maligning Stevenson’s intelligence and drawing power, and accusing Stevenson of ducking Kovalev, Hopkins and Pascal. Leon also soon revealed to Burton that negotiations were under way for Kovalev-Pascal.

Because this is boxing and because boxing websites love this stuff, the back-and-forth continued in article after article. The real news came on Dec. 2 when Kovalev-Pascal was officially announced.

No matter why Stevenson-Hopkins and Stevenson-Pascal fell apart — both sides in such disputes will always make claims regarding the reasons and about what the fighters do and don’t deserve — the fact is that Stevenson’s team wasn’t able to consummate deals with Hopkins and Pascal, allowing Kovalev’s team to make those bouts.

Kovalev’s team scavenged and scored a measure of revenge.

Pascal fought Roberto Bolonti this past Saturday. That fight ended in a no contest. Pascal dropped Bolonti while the referee was trying to break them apart. The shot didn’t look like it was hard enough to leave Bolonti down on the canvas for as long as it did and in so much distress that he would be taken from the ring on a stretcher.

It doesn’t really matter. Pascal-Bolonti was just a stop along the way to a bigger fight.

Now it is Kovalev and not Stevenson facing the big names. Now it is Stevenson and not Kovalev left looking for significant opponents. It’s a big change from where we were not so long ago.

This could easily change again. All it takes is for Pascal to beat Kovalev and for negotiations with Stevenson to begin anew.

It’s still a shame that this is the storyline we’re following with Kovalev and Stevenson.

While the business of boxing sometimes resembles the drama of the fights themselves, it’s still far more satisfying to see one fighter score a win over another inside of the ring than it is for any victories to come solely outside of it.

The 10 Count

1.  Congratulations to the newest inductees into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, who will enter Canastota in June 2015.

They are:

In the modern category: heavyweight champion Riddick Bowe; featherweight champion Naseem Hamed; and lightweight titleholder Ray Mancini.

In the old-timer category, for fighters whose careers ended between 1893 and 1988: 108-pound titleholder Yoko Gushiken; 112-pound titleholder Masao Ohba (inducted posthumously); and former 160-pound titleholder Ken Overlin (inducted posthumously).

In the non-participant category: publicist John F.X. Condon (inducted posthumously); booking agent/manager Rafael Mendoza; and referee Steve Smoger.

In the observer category: writer/editor Nigel Collins and broadcaster Jim Lampley.

2.  For the record, I vote in the modern category. I was allowed to choose up to five names, with the top three vote getters being inducted. I picked Hamed; 112-pound titleholder and 115-pound champion Santos Laciar; and 108- and 112-pound titleholder Hilario Zapata.

3.  Please pardon me while I repeat arguments I’ve made in the past when discussing the IBHOF voting and induction process:

- The names of the voters should be public.

- Add more international voters, given that this is an international hall.

- Vote totals should be public.

- Do away with the minimum of three “modern” inductees per year, which continues to lead to some undeserving names making it into Canastota.  Set up a threshold — similar to the one that baseball has — a percentage that candidates must surpass to make it into the Hall. I understand that this could be controversial, in that it could lead to years with just two, or one, or even no notable inductees, and that would hurt business at the Hall, as well as in the small town in which it sits.

4.  Let’s switch to some good news, beginning with Steve Cunningham, the former cruiserweight titleholder now competing at heavyweight whose career has continued in part to support the medical bills for his daughter Kennedy.

“She had her first open heart surgery at two days old and the second six months later,” reads a statement on a fundraising site set up for Kennedy earlier this year. “She was hospitalized for the first year of her life and suffered many setbacks along the way, including a stroke, many blood infections and also required a trach and vent for several years when she was younger.”

Kennedy, now 9 years old, underwent a heart transplant last week.

“Her surgery was a complete success, and she is currently recovering in the cardiac intensive care unit at the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh!” Elizabeth Cunningham wrote on the fundraising page last week. “We are so thankful to all of you for your amazing support and we ask that you keep Kennedy in your prayers!  We would also like to express our sincere gratitude towards her amazing donor family! They have given us a gift that we will forever be grateful for. This will be our most memorable holiday season!”

The initial fundraising goal was $25,000 to help cover some expenses. That has since been met and surpassed with $29,661 coming from 196 donations. A new goal of $45,000 has been set. The fundraising website can be found at HeartByFaith.com.

Cunningham is expected to fight Vyacheslav Glazkov in a heavyweight elimination bout in early 2015.

5.  There’s something about the phrase “elimination bout” that just sounds like it’s another way of describing a case of stomach flu.

6.  Boxers, Boxing Writers and Boxing Promoters Behaving Goodly:

- Junior middleweight Glen Tapia donated free Thanksgiving meals to hundreds of people in New Jersey, according to newspaper The Record.

- Former middleweight titleholder Peter Quillin is participating in a charity effort in which the winning bidder gets to train with him for an hour. The proceeds go toward research into Prader-Willi Syndrome.

- An amateur boxing card scheduled for this past weekend in Holyoke, Massachusetts, benefited “programs to keep inner-city youths active and off the streets,” according to the Springfield Republican.

- Junior-middleweight contender Jermell Charlo and writer Kelsey McCarson of The Sweet Science had their sparring session this past Saturday to raise money on behalf of Corbin Glasscock, a 6-year-old from Texas with osteosarcoma, or bone cancer. There are several fundraising efforts going on in that area of Texas to help Corbin’s parents cover the medical bills. As of early Sunday evening, this particular effort had raised $8,630 from 121 donations. That fundraising page can be found at http://GoFundMe.com/TeamCorbin .

7.  Boxers Behaving Badly, part one: Antonio Escalante needs to get help before he hurts himself or someone else. The former junior featherweight and featherweight was arrested last week for allegedly driving drunk, according to television station KVIA, which covers El Paso, Texas.  This was his fourth drunk driving arrest of 2014.

“Officers found Escalanate [at a gas station] in the driver’s seat unconscious with an open bottle of Michelob AmberBock, several empty beer bottles on the passenger seat and several more on the floorboard, according to the affidavit,” the article said. “Police say Escalante had very slurred speech and detected a very strong odor of alcohol from his breath. Police also said he appeared to have urinated on himself, had red, glassy, bloodshot eyes and had trouble standing, according to the affidavit.”

This comes just weeks after he’d pleaded guilty in two of the cases from earlier in the year. That plea ended with him being sentenced to one year in jail, though that sentence was suspended while he serves 18 months of probation and completes 100 hours of community service. Online court records now show a motion to revoke the plea agreement. Given this most recent arrest, Escalante very well could end up behind bars on those older charges while also facing court dates on the two open cases.

One of the open cases is scheduled to go to trial in May 2015. Escalante is accused of “driving while intoxicated with a child under 15 years of age,” according to online court records. He also was cited in May for allegedly having a child not secured by a safety seat. Online court records list similar accusations over the years: an unrestrained child in 2004, driving under the influence in 2006, driving without a valid license on multiple occasions in 2009 and 2010. Some of these cases wound up dismissed. He’s also had alleged license/license plate violations this year as well.
 
Escalante, who is 29 years old, turned pro in 2003. Among his notable wins are victories over Cornelius Lock, Mike Oliver, Miguel Roman and Gary Stark Jr. His losses came to Jairo Sanchez early in his career, to Mauricio Pastrana in 2007, in back-to-back knockout losses to Daniel Ponce De Leon in 2010 and Alejandro Perez, in back-to-back stoppage losses to Rocky Juarez in 2012 and Robert Marroquin in 2013 — and, most recently, a third-round technical knockout loss to Miguel Berchelt on Oct. 11. That dropped him to 29-7 with 20 KOs.

8.  Boxers Behaving Badly, part two:  Anthony Small, a retired junior middleweight from London, has been arrested and is being accused of attempting to smuggle two men out of the country and to Syria to join up with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, according to The Daily Mail.

Small, 33, was taken into police custody last week “on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism,” the report said.

Small fought as a pro between 2004 and 2010, going 23-2 with 16 KOs. His losses came in 2007 to Bradley Pryce via seventh-round stoppage and in his final bout, a majority decision defeat against Sam Webb.

9.  I’m looking forward to the upcoming rubber match between Mike Alvarado and Brandon Rios, which will take place on Jan. 24 in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado. But there are those who aren’t, and I can understand their perspective.

To me, it’s a big fight for both men and isn’t serving either up as a designated opponent or “B” side. They had an entertaining war won by Rios in October 2012, then Alvarado mixed in more boxing to take the rematch in March 2013. It’ll be in Alvarado’s territory, which means ticket sales should be good, and it’ll be aired on HBO, providing more money for the coffers.

But others are squeamish because Alvarado and Rios have accumulated damage over the course of their careers — undeniably true for all boxers, but particularly so for fighters with their style and the punishment they’ve taken because of it. Given that it’s a competitive fight between a pair of brawlers, these folks are concerned about the further damage this third bout could do.

It’s a question of whether Alvarado and Rios are in conditions similar to what Rafael Marquez and Israel Vazquez were before their third fight — or closer to the highly diminished state Vazquez was in their fourth.

Alvarado’s past six fights included a come-from-behind victory over Breidis Prescott, a win in a battle with Mauricio Herrera, the stoppage loss to Rios and the rematch win, followed by the beating he took against Ruslan Provodnikov last year and the decision loss he suffered against Juan Manuel Marquez earlier this year.

Rios’ past four fights were the two bouts with Alvarado, a wide decision loss to Manny Pacquiao in late 2013 and a disqualification win over Diego Chaves this past August.

As writer Mark Ortega noted, neither man has been in an easy fight in some time, which Ortega says means we have no idea how much they have left.

Boxers can get old from one appearance to the next. A fighter can fight well in battle but leave a proverbial piece of himself in the ring, with the consequences becoming apparent the next time out. An easy fight can be misleading; just because a boxer looks good in it doesn’t mean he’s undamaged. Still, a boxer’s struggles in a keep-busy bout can serve as a warning sign.

No matter what the reality is before this fight, it’s likely that two fighters who have been ever willing to take punishment in order to deliver it will continue to do so in January. That’s the uncomfortable truth about this sport, and we can only hope that boxers in general hang up the gloves before it’s too late.

10.  Given a handful of the names that have somehow made it into Canastota in recent years, we might as well change the International Boxing Hall of Fame to the “Boxing Hall of Pretty Good Fighters American Writers Heard Of.”

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide . Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com