By Jake Donovan
It’s a dilemma with a simple solution, but instead remains a problem.
There is no need for dueling shows in Las Vegas this weekend, nor should Sergey Kovalev and his team have to worry about what’s next. But because he and Adonis Stevenson—far and away the two best light heavyweights in the world for the moment—can’t find a way to settle up in the ring, we are left with a miss such as awaits on Saturday, along with clutter atop a once-promising division on the verge of growing stale.
Rather than a clash to determine light heavyweight supremacy, Kovalev’s next appearance is a mandatory title defense versus Nadjib Mohammedi. The bout airs live on HBO, but shares space along the Vegas strip as Al Haymon brings his Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) series to town as Beibut Shumenov faces B.J. Flores in a cruiserweight bout which airs live on NBC Sports Network from The Palms Casino and Resort.
Both shows run in direct conflict with another, which is sad for a number of reasons. At the box office, both cards will take a bath. The Palms is a far more intimate venue, which means fewer tickets to give away in the event that the show doesn’t sell.
As for Kovalev-Mohammedi—barring a record-breaking walkup crowd, there figures to be thousands of fans disguised as empty chairs.
It’s easy to blame Haymon for the latter—and quite frankly for many of today’s problems in boxing if you’re asking those not on board with the PBC movement. There exists the working theories that the competing show detracts attention from the more visible HBO card, that it cuts into its potential buying audience and that non-PBC promoters are forced to operate in a market where free ticket giveaways have become the expectation rather than a rare treat.
Perhaps there’s some truth to those claims, although it doesn’t explain in the past few months:
• The record-breaking box-office results produced by the long-awaited May 2clash between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao;
• Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez drawing well over 30,000 for his ring return in Houston earlier this year;
• Gennady Golovkin playing to a sold out crowd in the greater Los Angeles area, where PBC events have also recently been staged;
• Miguel Cotto drawing a sizeable crowd at Barclays Center a mere eight days after PBC hosted an event in the very same venue.
It’s also worth noting that tickets for Kovalev-Mohammedi went on sale well before the competing PBC show was ever finalized and announced. They didn’t move then, nor did Main Events’ own giveaway attempt—a Father’s Day “Buy One, Get One Free” special—prove to make a dent at the box office.
Recent history suggests this is hardly a unique situation for Kovalev as an A-side, particularly when not matched with the right dance partner. Given what was on the table as recent as three months ago, he has only himself—or at least his team—to blame.
This weekend’s title defense is not unlike a situation the unbeaten knockout artist from Russia faced some 17 months ago—heading into an HBO-televised headliner against a virtual no-hoper, with no clue what lies ahead in his immediate future.
The circumstances surrounding the eventual stoppage win over Agnew last March were out of Kovalev’s control. The night was originally designed as the first leg of a pair of showcase fights eventually leading to the one light heavyweight fight the boxing world craved. The wheels were set in motion late in 2013, when Kovalev and Stevenson were racking up knockout wins on HBO’s dime.
Stevenson messed up the program when deciding to sign with Haymon and take his business across the street to Showtime. The move was ridiculed for a number of reasons, namely the perception that he was avoiding Kovalev, along with the decline in viewership with which his two Showtime bouts were met in 2014.
Still, there was the issue of finding an opponent for Kovalev that would resonate with the boxing audience.
It wasn’t Agnew, as the knockout win led to yet another ho-hum matchup as he faced mandatory challenger Blake Caparello last August. Neither fight performed particularly well, as to be expected given the lack of notoriety among the B-side and with both fights taking place in Atlantic City, once a boxing hotbed but whose economy has hit a massive decline.
The latter fight gained relevance late into fight week, when an on-the-spot deal was struck for Kovalev to face legendary Bernard Hopkins later that year, providing he get past Caparello. He did just that, though it required surviving an opening round flash knockdown to drill the Aussie boxer in round two.
Four months later, Kovalev delivered the signature performance of his career, pitching a 12-round shutout while completely dominating Hopkins like nobody else has through his 26-years in the sport to that point.
Even with the career-defining win in tow, Kovalev and his team still carried it as if they wanted Stevenson, going to great lengths to attempt to secure the bout they claimed to have craved. Duva even went out of her way to position Kovalev—already a three-belted titlist at light heavyweight—to where his next win would guarantee a crack at Stevenson.
The condition came with beating Jean Pascal, the latter’s mandatory challenger at the time. Kovalev did just that, becoming the first to stop the Haitian-Canadian with an 8th round knockout this past March. Back-to-back standout wins at light heavyweight clearly placed Kovalev atop the division, despite Stevenson’s status as the lineal champion.
Part of the deal struck by Duva was that—in addition to the Pascal fight—Kovalev would be granted one more stay-busy fight, as would Stevenson, before the two moved towards negotiations for a potential clash in the fall.
With that in mind came the plan to move forward with a mandatory title defense versus Mohammedi, a bout in which oddsmakers place Kovalev as high as a 33-1 favorite to win this weekend. Stevenson already had an April clash with Sakio Bika in queue, but that didn’t stop his promoter, Yvon Michel from making a move not anticipated by the Kovalev side—requesting an expedited purse bid hearing.
The World Boxing Council (WBC)—who recognizes Stevenson as its champion—had ordered the two sides to negotiate, but sanctioning body rules allow for either party to order a purse bid at any time, once it is believed that talks won’t progress. Given the history between camps, it was the right call by Michel, even if the move came about three months earlier than expected.
Spooked by the ideal that Stevenson’s side—backed by Haymon’s deep financial war chest—would win the purse bid and thus stage the fight on a network other than HBO, Kovalev was withdrawn from the mix. Instead, he was steered towards this weekend’s undesirable mandatory title defense, a fight that HBO perhaps necessarily didn’t want, but is stuck with due to the network’s insistence of being involved with Kovalev’s next—and future fights.
The exclusive network deal limits the scope for the reigning light heavyweight titlist. Furthermore, it provides even less reason to care about what is essentially a showcase appearance on its own in representing HBO’s lone boxing telecast of the summer on its flagship network.
The pain was temporary when his team was burdened with this dilemma a year ago, but was also met with sympathy.
Even with a competing show in town (by presence only), it’s a bit more difficult to feel sorry for an elite level fighter like Kovalev this time around.
Following through with intended plans to face Stevenson makes all of these problems go away. Short of a fighter such as Andre Ward deciding at some point during fight week that he’s ready to face Kovalev next, more weekends like the one ahead will likely follow—a sad scenario of remaining a step behind in a year where so much progress in the sport has otherwise been made.
Jake Donovan is the Managing Editor of BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox