Sergey Kovalev's H2H Ranking

I've always thought that prime Kovalev eventually finds and stops Bivol late. Too much firepower supported by a highly underrated delivery system.

Beterbiev is a more challenging proposition, but I think Kovalev is no worse than even money. That'd be one of those who gets tagged first type of affairs between two explosive punchers.

 

Yikes(?)

Yarde was bigger than Beterbiev on the night,

fought him on home turf

with a biased referee and judges

threw his mouthpiece out twice to get a rest

and even had the referee take a time out to adjust his handwraps and trunksm...

...and he still got KTFO

Yet you think Bivol's very competitive fight against a guy is is the lowest ranked LHW in his own country is sometimes a better victory?

Is that how you comfort yourself?

Come on bro

Credit to Bivol though. He aged out Beterbiev and may get his victory after all.
Though it will be tainted because he would be facing a 40 year old who had had multiple knee and shoulder surgeries.

 

He was fantastic at his peak. No one could touch him.
Jackson more than dropped hints leading up the second Ward fight.

 

The Alvarez fight was a setup and it happened after kovalev was hitting the bottle hard.

 

I think prime vs prime Kovalev gets knocked out by Beterbiev. Too fragile and can’t do much with him up close. He would have a real chance of sparking Artur first though. There’s also the amateur fight between them which Beterbiev won which spells bad news for Kovalev in the pros. Kovalev insists it was a robbery but I don’t believe him

 

Exactly

Why would Russian judges favour a Chechen fighter on Russian territory?

 

I can list you a list of boxers who took more than 3 rounds from the top 5 ATG boxers.

 

No excuses he got knocked out end of Kovalev doesn't have a great resume and he could be a tad fragile.

 

Best win a prime Cleverly who lost against Fonfara. Dropped against Blake Caparello. Looked terrible against Chilemba. Pascal and Agnew were no elite opponents. Couldn't knock out Hopkins who was punched out of the ring against Smith Jr. Canelo knocked him out cold, he started at 140-147 lbs.

I also agree that he beat Ward but someone from Kovalev's alleged calibre should have retired this fraud after the first fight. I enjoyed watching Kovalev's fights but I don't see him among the big names of this sport.

 

That’s a good point. Also everybody knew Beterbiev was the top dog in the Russian team, and that’s consistent with him beating Kovalev fairly

 

Ok, I'll leave out Roy (who I personally believe was damn near perfect) I'll give you 10....... I'll also leave out anyone 70's and farther back n just use who operated "mainly" in the 80's-90's forward:

Virgil
Michalczewski
Prince Charles
Barkley
Maske
Chad
Tarver
Adamek
Tiozzo
Erdei

If you notice, pay attention to the names I mentioned. All of these men except Erdei are physically larger than Kovalev, or had certain stand out advantages vs him, and are all (aside from Barkley) were fairly elite at their craft or were outright gunslingers (Barkley was this). We can look at Kovalev's entire history now and surmise what would have and ultimately did give him issues. And why this didn't happen until it did. These 10 guys alone would've given him serious, serious problems, there's others from this era I think would as well. .

My thing is: LHW is one of my favorite divisions so I've deep dived into it's history a little more than most other divisions (other than MW). It's such a deep division, I think some guys that had simply solid careers placed into some different eras would've been long time reigning guys.

So yeah I ranked Kovalev very highly for a time and for "this" era, no I don't personally think he's a h2h ATG. I think he's competitive in most eras but again, ATG h2h for me no.

 

Where do you rank Beterbiev?

I would have had him as a H2H ATG if he managed to come through Bivol

 

If Ward could bully him at will, so could Beterbiev, although Beterbiev does get hit clean a little too much for my liking.

 

Funny you should ask that, I've actually considered this topic before.

I actually think Kovalev during his run was better than Beterbiev and there's a number of times I picked Kovalev when that specific potential match was mentioned on here.

I actually liked Kovalev a lot, Beterbiev as well, I think they're both truly great in this era but I shudder at naming them potential H2H ATG's. Other than Usyk, Crawford, Inoue and a couple other guys I don't think this era has any potential monsters like that.

 

No, the Canelo fight was a setup