Following Sergey Kovalev’s dismantling of 49 year old fight legend Bernard Hopkins, the light heavyweight division may have a new king.
Kovalev, who entered as the WBO champ, added B-HOP’s WBA and IBF titles thus securing three of the four major world belts.
Lurking in the wings is Adonis Stevenson, the division’s RING Magazine (or lineal) champion.
In professional boxing, the lineal championship of a weight class is a notional world championship title. It is initially held at some moment in time by a boxer universally acclaimed as the best in the class.
Another boxer can win the lineal championship only by defeating the reigning lineal champion in the ring. The lineal champion is described as “the man who beat the man.”
Officially, Stevenson is “the man who beat the man” in the light heavyweight division but unofficially that distinction now may belong to Sergey Kovalev.
How big was Hopkins vs Kovalev? According to Google Trends, the query “Bernard Hopkins” was the six trendiest search in Google US yesterday and No. 9 in Google UK today. And in the Philippines and Ukraine, “Hopkins vs Kovalev” surged to No. 5 today. If you’re a casual fan of the sport and were unfamiliar with Sergey Kovalev 48 hours ago, you know him now.
He is the first and only fighter to dominate Bernard Hopkins, and accomplishing that feat on boxing’s biggest stage certainly didn’t hinder his cause.
Was Stevenson’s first round knockout of Chad Dawson, the former’s biggest win to date, anywhere near that big?
Even prior to Hopkins vs Kovalev, Stevenson received a lot of backlash for not facing Kovalev. Fans insisted he was running scared and hiding behind manager Al Haymon and Showtime Sports executive Stephen Espinosa.
But back then, Stevenson and Hopkins were the only big name, relevant fighters in the division.
In Adonis’ defense, Kovalev didn’t have enough of a following to generate the level of interest to create the revenue befitting Stevenson vs Kovalev.
After last night, the ‘tables may have turned’ on Team Stevenson.
From a standpoint of stock value, Adonis and Sergey are, at the very least, on equal footing today.
