In boxing, there is safe Twitter courage and then there is its grimy opposite: the wraps-shoes-trunks-cup-gloves-mouthpiece type of courage. When Sergey Kovalev hits the road to face tough Jean Pascal for a panoply of light heavyweight baubles tomorrow night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, consider it a victory for concrete, albeit quotidian, reality over grandiose fantasy?no matter how many ?Likes? or RTs the latter spawns.
Before Adonis Stevenson got mixed up with Al Haymon there was a small chance that the 175-pound class might produce a series of dramatic matchups and, in its own watered-down 21st century way, suggest comparison to the Golden Age of the division in the late 1970s. But, to paraphrase Robert Frost, nothing gold in boxing can stay, and instead Stevenson bolted for the PBC Golden Parachute Plan.
Give credit, then, to Jean Pascal for fighting a pitiless KO artist when he could have arranged something easier than facing a man who ruined Nathan Cleverly, dominated Bernard Hopkins, and, in the most tragic byproduct of a blood sport, left one man dead from injuries incurred between the ropes.
Nearly four years have passed since Pascal, 32, dropped a ragged decision to Bernard Hopkins, whose geriatric mastery?both physical and mental?stymied Pascal from the press conference all the way to the final tallying of scorecards. But Pascal rebounded with a slew of wins before facing Lucian Bute on January 18, 2014. Apparently still suffering from PTSD after the thrashing he took from Carl Froch a few years ago, Bute looked as lively as the Champlain Monument en route to dropping a humiliating decision in a turf-war-turned-turf-bore.
But Pascal was unable to capitalize on the biggest win of his career because of managerial and promotional strife. Pascal eventually dumped his promoter, GYM, and sat out for the next few months waiting for Adonis Stevenson to turn his Twitter feed into something resembling reality. This is like waiting for help at the emergency room of Coney Island Hospital. Eventually, Pascal wound up facing Roberto Feliciano Bolonti on a second-tier pay-per-view, only to see that match end in a no-contest in the second round when Bolonti could not continue after being clubbed on the break. Less than six minutes of action in the last fifteen months hardly seems like the kind of preparation necessary to defuse an explosive threat like Kovalev, but the enigmatic Pascal seems oblivious to this fact.
Mercurial in the ring, on (anti) social media, and at podiums, Pascal, 29-2-1-1NC (17), is a dynamic athlete with middling fundamentals. You can envision Pascal diving for a sinking line drive in centerfield, earning a Gordie Howe hat trick against the Boston Bruins at TD Garden, blazing across the hardwood and to the basket after a nasty crossover dribble, or streaking down the sidelines on a kick-off return. Quick-fisted and footloose, Pascal, Laval, Quebec, via Haiti, has used his natural athleticism to build a solid career in Montreal, but at times he appears to be a man with a vocation and not a gift. Then again, maybe Pascal is ready to harness his physical attributes and score a major upset.
To beat Kovalev, however, Pascal will have to be more than physically prepared: He will have to be psychologically ready as well, a feat he has not always managed. Against Hopkins in their rematch, for example, Pascal appeared to have a meltdown halfway through the fight. Hopkins uses some bizarre tactics in the ring, but they are almost always executed with purpose. Pascal, by contrast, seems to yield to the moment and lose focus on the task at hand. Will Pascal be able to keep from unraveling under the pressure tactics Kovalev is sure to use? Stamina has also been an issue for Pascal. He faded in the first fight against Hopkins?which wound up being scored a draw?and looked like he was about to crumble late against Chad Dawson in 2010 when the bout was stopped and sent to the scorecards because of a cut Dawson had suffered. Although Pascal mounted a rally against Hopkins in the last minute of their rematch, he seemed at a loss for most of the previous rounds.
Kovalev, 26-0-1 (23), applies pressure in the ring in two ways: by actually cutting off the ring and by the mere threat of landing one of his crippling punches. Pascal will have to tighten up his technique significantly to keep Kovalev at bay. On the outside, Pascal ought to be able to dart around Kovalev and land some telling blows, but his wide shots are often delivered in a single, sudden burst, which undercuts his power because his feet are rarely set.
In his last outing, Kovalev, from Kopeysk, Russia, but now fighting out of Florida, dropped Hopkins early and dominated him methodically the rest of the way, proving that he can go the full route and that he can also add some patience and craft into his seek-and-destroy game. What makes Kovalev, 31, particularly dangerous, aside from his raw power, of course, is his body attack, which adds another dimension to an already potent offense.
In some ways, Kovalev is a good style matchup for Pascal, who can conceivably race around the ring until the final bell, but ?Krusher? is a fighter who seems bent on explosive victories, his cautious approach against Bernard Hopkins notwithstanding. That intensity may be the difference when the two men meet in ring center. ?Yes, he speaks a lot, more than he needs. But he?s selling the fight ? maybe,? Kovalev told The Montreal Gazette about the mouthy Pascal. ?I don?t know what he?s doing and I don?t care what he?s saying. Every opponent pays in the ring.? Some more than others, it seems.
