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Kathy Duva told Steve Kim on Monday 03/21/2016, that she had a conversations with the Director of the World of Boxing promotion company Andrei Ryabinsky, which is making plans moving forward.
She claims that Mr. Ryabinsky is actually very busy working for the Povetkin/Wilder fight on May 21st in Russia. Therefore, on Tuesday 03/22/2016, Manager Egis Klimas also confirmed that Ryabinsky have his attention on Sergey Kovalev for the making of his voluntary defense this time around in Moscow. Claiming the agreement is to setup a fight for June 2016, unless the written agreement is amended for July.
Kovalev likes to make us believe he wants to unify all 4 major belts, it seems like they haven't found any opponent yet to persuade promoter Ryabinsky, thus Adonis Stevenson is still the WBC champion, still available and almost 40, not to mention Al Haymon recently loss Wilder's purse bid to Andrei Ryabinsky.
Consequently, Kovalev should fight Stevenson in Russia this June; why shouldn't he?
Ryabinsky went into his own pocket for $7m, yet still almost brought the fight to Barclays Center in NYC
Lol sure he did, he really was going to fork out $7m to hold the fight in the US instead of Russia.
http://www.pix-host.com/allimages/61729732.jpg
Kathy Duva told Steve Kim on Monday 03/21/2016, that she had a conversations with the Director of the World of Boxing promotion company Andrei Ryabinsky, which is making plans moving forward.
She claims that Mr. Ryabinsky is actually very busy working for the Povetkin/Wilder fight on May 21st in Russia. Therefore, on Tuesday 03/22/2016, Manager Egis Klimas also confirmed that Ryabinsky have his attention on Sergey Kovalev for the making of his voluntary defense this time around in Moscow. Claiming the agreement is to setup a fight for June 2016, unless the written agreement is amended for July.
Kovalev likes to make us believe he wants to unify all 4 major belts, it seems like they haven't found any opponent yet to persuade promoter Ryabinsky, thus Adonis Stevenson is still the WBC champion, still available and almost 40, not to mention Al Haymon recently loss Wilder's purse bid to Andrei Ryabinsky.
Consequently, Kovalev should fight Stevenson in Russia this June; why shouldn't he?
Kathy Duva will never put up the type of money to move the fight off of the one financially viable option (Stevenson-Kovalev in Montreal, on a joint PPV).
Ryabinsky went into his own pocket for $7m, yet still almost brought the fight to Barclays Center in NYC, for the simple fact that the package (NYC has the largest Russian speaking population in the US, Showtime was backing the fight with a good site fee, though the fight would air Sunday morning across Russia) was fair and generally made sense for all parties.
Stevenson-Kovalev from the Bell Center, with Canadian PPV/Showtime rights fee/international TV revenue, is likely a big enough fight to have the fighters split $6m.
Getting the fight to Moscow will likely cost a bit more than that, but I don't know that A) Duva has anything that would get Ryabinsky wanting to put up that kind of money for her or B) Kovalev's Russia profile is such that, after only having two fights in Russia as a pro, he could head to Ekaterinburg and do $8m in business (to simply cover the costs/payout to the fighters).