By Jake Donovan
As HBO prepares to close out its 2015 boxing season, the undercard for its 2016 premier continues to take shape. Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal will ring in the New Year for the American cable giant –albeit north of the border as their January 30 rematch will once again take place at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
The show now has a confirmed televised co-feature as well as a local matchup gracing the undercard, as more bouts will be added in the coming weeks.
Serving as the official lead-in, unbeaten Russian welterweight prospect Dmitry Mikhaylenko will make his HBO-televised debut as he faces Philadelphia’s Ray Robinson.
Whispers of the bout – which was first mentioned by ESPN.com senior writer Dan Rafael - have circulated throughout fight week at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino, with HBO’s year-end show loaded with Philadelphia fighters. The matchup was ultimately confirmed by HBO representatives, with Main Events CEO Kathy Duva – who represents Mikhaylenko – informing BoxingScene.com news editor Steve Kim on Friday that the fight is now a done deal.
Mikhaylenko (20-0, 9KOs) – who is co-managed by Egis Klimas (who also manages Kovalev, among many other boxers from the Eastern Bloc) and Aleksey Titov – comes in having scored knockout wins in each of his last three starts. The 29-year old boxer from Gelendzhik, Russia will appear on the same card as Kovalev for the fourth time, the most recent occasion coming at this very venue in March.
His most recent win came in August, scoring an 8th round stoppage of Johan Perez on an HBO Latino-televised show in Indio, California.
Robinson (20-2, 9KOs) has managed nine straight wins following back-to-back losses to Brad Solomon and Shawn Porter. The rangy southpaw – who turns 30 just nine days before fight night – has been out of the ring since a lopsided 10-round win over Sherzodbek Alimjanov in a Fox Sports-1 televised bout this past April from Foxwoods Casino in Mashantucket, Connecticut.
Of the two televised fights to appear on HBO, Pascal is the only boxer to represent Canada. The rest of the undercard will be loaded up with local attractions. One such bout that has been confirmed is a regional middleweight title fight between Renan St. Juste and Francis Lafreniere, which was announced by Interbox earlier in the week.
The evening’s headliner features Kovalev (28-0-1, 25KOs) in his seventh defense of at least one light heavyweight title. The unbeaten knockout artist from Russia – who now lives in California and divides training time between Big Bear, Calif. and Ft. Lauderdale, Florida – makes his third career appearance in Canada, with his previous two trips ending in knockout.
His first light heavyweight title defense ended with an emphatic 2nd round knockout of Ismayl Sillah. The Nov. ’13 clash was strategically placed on the same HBO-televised card as World light heavyweight champ Adonis Stevenson (who stopped Tony Bellew in six rounds) with the intention of matching the two in the biggest fight that can be made in the division.
The fight has yet to happen, for well-documented reasons. Meanwhile, Kovalev has sought available top game at light heavyweight, including back-to-back wins over Bernard Hopkins and Pascal among his six previous title defenses. The 12-round win over Hopkins last November netted two more belts (WBA and IBF) for Kovalev to go along with the WBO strap he violently extracted from Nathan Cleverly in Aug. ’13.
Following the career-best win over Hopkins was his 8th round stoppage of Pascal in March. Despite the conclusive ending, the bout was viewed as the most competitive among Kovalev’s current title reign, which in part explains why the two will do it again.
The other part is, simply, that he needs someone to fight.
A deal is in place for Kovalev to face unbeaten former World super middleweight champion Andre Ward towards the back end of 2016. In the meantime, the plan is to keep the Russian knockout artist active, which hasn’t been the case in a 2015 campaign that has stalled since a 3rd round knockout of Nadjib Mohammedi in July.
Pascal (30-3-1, 17KOs) appeared on that same card, struggling mightily in barely edging previously unbeaten Yunieski Gonzalez in a highly questionable decision win. Still, he was the only one to not only raise his hand, but also agree to sign on the dotted line when it came time to accepting the fight.
The rematch marks Pascal’s second attempt at becoming a two-time light heavyweight champion. His reign began with a minor upset, a technical unanimous decision win over Chad Dawson in Aug. ’10 to establish light heavyweight championship lineage.
It was his only career victory in a title fight. He previously dropped a 12-round decision to then-unbeaten Carl Froch in a vacant super middleweight title fight and then fought to a draw and a title-losing decision to Hopkins in Dec. ’10 and May ’11, respectively. Injuries and inability to secure big fights have slowed his career to a crawl, with just six fights in 4 ½ years, though including a 12-round win over Lucian Bute last January which attracted the largest box office take in Canada boxing history.
Jake Donovan is the managing editor of BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox
