He avanged that loss though. Boone is better as the pure numbers in his record say. He´s defeated a few unbeaten prospects and gave SOG some trouble for example.
Should be very competitive fight and a 50/50 in my book. Could easily go either way and not just on points but with a brutal KO.
Yes but Darnell was destroyed even more conclusively in their rematch than he was in the Stevenson rematch. Also, it's difficult to equate a knockout loss with a close hard-fought points victory. Stevenson is 1-1 (1) with Boone; Kovalev is 2-0 (1) and Kovalev's stoppage was not only faster but more impressive.
All I'm saying is that there's no crime in having difficulty or losing to someone like Boone. Both fighters obviously learned from the experience. I would like Kovalev to win, since Stevenson is one of the more ungodly of ungodly ****s, and I expect that he should. But Stevenson's rate of progression in recent fights is notable, and it's not the lead cinch centainty in my mind that it might have been only twelve months earlier.
Sergey got hit more in his rematch with Boone in the first round than Stevenson did in 6 rounds. Clearly lost the first round, got tagged with huge counters and showed a very leaky defense. [YT]dKEjDYvc-lI[/YT] Compare to Stevensons rematch where he dominates Boone every round, hardly gets hit and KO's him clean [YT]p7vVsbS_dkU[/YT]