Ranking the Best Opponents for Sergey Kovalev's Next Fight

Well, that one didn’t prove a whole lot, did it?

Unbeaten three-belted light heavyweight Sergey Kovalev climbed into a ring in Las Vegas and successfully risked his share of the divisional kingdom in an HBO main event, but the third-round blitz of Nadjib Mohammedi didn’t reveal much about the slugging Russian that we didn’t already know.

Saturday's win boosted Kovalev to 28-0-1 as a pro and was his 25th knockout, not to mention the second defense of the IBF and WBA belts he won from Bernard Hopkins last November—and the sixth of the WBO crown he brutally wrested from Welshman Nathan Cleverly in August 2013.

“He’s one of boxing’s destroyers,” said HBO analyst Max Kellerman.

The end came at 2:38 of the third round, following an exchange in which Kovalev forced Mohammedi backward with a lead right hand and then floored him—and possibly broke a bone in his face—with a solid straight left. Mohammedi rose wincing at the count of nine, but referee Kenny Bayless immediately waved off the proceedings.

“I’m happy,” Kovalev told Kellerman. “But I told him to stand up, I wanted him to continue.”

Kellerman’s broadcast partner, Jim Lampley, continued the champion-centric praise-fest in his sign-off.

“There’s been a palpable transition [in Kovalev],” he said. “He’s boxing. He’s thinking. He’s moving on his feet. He’s a lot better now and that’s a tremendously scary force. The sky’s the limit.”

Given the uncertainty of the boxing climate these days, it’s difficult to chart a logical A-B-C course for any fighter—even an established dominator like Kovalev. Nevertheless, we lined up six high-profile candidates we believe would make good foils for the next time he climbs through the ropes.

Click through to see our choices and feel free to chime in with your own in the comments section.

This one is a victim of boxing’s political climate.

Though it makes complete sense for the lineal champion of a division to meet its three-belted champion, the prospect of WBC kingpin Adonis Stevenson meeting Kovalev seems less likely by the minute.

A summit between them looked to be a done deal when both men were fighting on HBO, but Stevenson scuttled those plans when he ditched the Network of Champions to head to Showtime in pursuit of a larger paycheck with Bernard Hopkins. Hopkins provided a wrestling swerve when he then jumped from Showtime to HBO to get his own match with Kovalev, which left Stevenson to battle criticism that he was ducking the big fights.

Kovalev called him a "piece of s--t" on HBO's air after a previous appearance and again this week in an interview with Bleacher Report, but a defiant Stevenson told CBSSports.com that he'll do whatever it takes to get a Kovalev date, regardless of public perception. In fact, it was the Kovalev team that pulled out of a purse-bidding process for the match because of television conflicts.

"When I finish beating Kovalev, then the fans will probably find somebody else," Stevenson said. "It's always like that. That's the reality, and that's why I don't care. I want the fight. And the manager and the promoter will do their jobs, too. I want the fight. I want the fight so bad."

It’s the logical fight to make but perhaps the least likely to get done, which is starting to make it tiring to even talk about.

Few fighters in the world equal Kovalev’s level of menace at 175 pounds.

Gennady Golovkin, though, is one of them.

The Kazakhstan-born middleweight has held a title belt since late 2011 and has seen his profile raise significantly, thanks to a consecutive KO streak that stretches back to an eight-round decision over something called Amar Amari back in 2008. The run of stoppages hasn’t exactly left opponents champing at the bit to get at Golovkin, which has helped build his brand as the most-avoided fighter in boxing and led to past claims that he’d go anywhere from 154 to 168 pounds to secure a match with a big name.

Golovkin and Kovalev have sparred together in the past, and each has worked with trainer Abel Sanchez, who said Kovalev was “afraid of Golovkin when he was in the ring.” Clearly, Triple-G is still on the mind of the Russian light heavyweight, who told Bleacher Report this week that he’d be willing to engage his former training partner if the fight were made in his weight class.

Should the full 160-pound unification opportunity that Golovkin seeks not materialize, a Kovalev match is presumably one that the public would accept as a violent substitute.

Haitian-turned-Canadian Jean Pascal had a rematch on his mind.

He’d suggested he was still the best light heavyweight in the world even after an eighth-round loss to Kovalev earlier this year, and he had drawn the ire of the slugging Russian, who claimed he would put Pascal to sleep in the rematch far earlier than he’d been deemed successful the first time.

But Yunieski Gonzalez clearly had no interest in such a scenario.

The unbeaten Cuban slugger, nicknamed “The Monster,” did his best to upset the narrative from the very first minute on Saturday night, pounding the smaller Pascal with powerful sledgehammer shots and noticeably wobbling him throughout the first round. The brutal momentum slowed gradually as the rounds wore on, but Gonzalez was nonetheless able to do enough in nearly every session on the way to seemingly earning a decision over his more celebrated foe.

Problem is, the judges didn’t agree. Pascal was given a unanimous verdict with three scores of 96-94, smudging Gonzalez’s record with its first loss after 16 consecutive victories. Each member of the HBO broadcast crew thought Gonzalez had done enough to win, and one of the post-fight suggestions was that Gonzalez would make a more palatable match for Kovalev than Pascal.

“I think Gonzalez earned the shot,” HBO’s Max Kellerman said.

The champion is probably too powerful and too skilled to find himself in as much jeopardy as Pascal did against Gonzalez, but it’d certainly be a brutal spectacle for as long as it lasts.

No one, outside of perhaps Jean Pascal himself, thought the Haitian-turned-Canadian was the better man when he shared a ring with Kovalev four months ago in Montreal.

But even though the big Russian battered the former IBO/WBC champion into an eighth-round stoppage, Pascal showed enough spunk while vertical to make the idea of a rematch palatable.

He downed previously Cuban slugger Yunieski Gonzalez by a dubious unanimous decision on the Kovalev-Mohammedi undercard to set up the second go-round. 

Bleacher Report scored it 97-93 for Gonzalez. All three judges gave it to Pascal, 96-94.

Regardless, the prospect of a Pascal-Kovalev rematch was spiced up by some vitriolic back-and-forth chatter between the camps leading into Saturday night.

“I want to kick his ass again and much, much bigger this time,” Kovalev said in a media teleconference before the Mohammedi fight. “If it will happen, a rematch, he will sleep in four rounds because he is a piece of s--t."

Pascal lobbed back his own verbal press conference grenade, labeling himself the “best light heavyweight in the world” and questioning Kovalev’s championship behavior.

“It's all about the fans,” he said. “What fight they want to see and who you think is the best. Some champions have belts and have no class. And when you're a champion, you're supposed to behave and talk like a champion.”

There's not a lot of reason to believe the result would change in the rematch, but the blather at least provides a storyline.

It’d be easy to dismiss chatter from nine-fight pro Artur Beterbiev as just that. Chatter.

But a closer look at the unbeaten 30-year-old’s resume indicates it might be something more.

Beterbiev met Kovalev, his Russian countryman, twice in the amateurs and both times walked away with decision victories—albeit ones that Kovalev dismisses as products of bad judging. Nevertheless, Beterbiev turned pro in 2013 and has won each of those nine fights, all by stoppage, while fighting just 26 total rounds.

Among his victims are former IBF champion Tavoris Cloud, who didn’t make it out of Round 2 in September 2014, and Gabriel Campillo, an ex-WBA title claimant who was stopped in four rounds in April—two years after he’d been halted a round earlier in a meeting with Kovalev.

“When I step in the ring, I don’t have a friend,” Beterbiev told BoxingScene.com. “I want to continue to get better until I face Sergey Kovalev again. And I will beat him again.”

Not surprisingly, Kovalev sees things a bit differently.

“First earn a fight with me,” he told BoxingScene.com, referring to Beterbiev. “And then I will punish you.”

If the new kid in town is anything near what he’s appeared to be, we might be onto something.

Welcome to the latest version of “the one everyone is talking about.”

Now that unbeaten super middleweight king Andre Ward has returned to the ring and figures to stay awhile, it’s only natural that he’s being talked about in connection with big-name foes who are seeking fights. And because he’s cleaned out all viable options at 168 pounds, it’s just as predictable that those prospective matches involve fighters in adjacent weight classes.

Enter Kovalev.

Former middleweight and light heavyweight champ Bernard Hopkins, who was dropped and pummeled by Kovalev last November, suggested to Bleacher Report that Ward, a former Olympic gold medalist, would provide precisely the type of foil the Russian needs to further boost a burgeoning profile.

“I don’t see it in a year or two years from now, I see it within a fight or two,” Hopkins said. “I saw (Ward) look great in the last fight and he’ll look better in the next one and his competition is going to step up. That’s a superfight, definitely. As long as both guys continue to win, it’s absolutely a superfight.”

In fact, Kovalev told CBSSports.com that the fight is a near certainty.

“(The Ward) fight will happen, yes,” he said. “It will be an interesting fight and a very exciting fight because Andre Ward is a very talented guy. He's champion of the world. He's one of the best pound-for-pound. One of the best. It's a big name and he's a big boxer and a big talent.”