Remembering A Peak Sergey Kovalev

Used to love watching Kovalev. A well schooled and well drilled boxer who chose violence overall. Joy to watch.

The Ward 1 robbery seemed to deflate his spirit, almost like he just sort of stopped caring as much after that. Very similar vibe with the GGG robbery vs Canelo in their first fight. Like, they lost something after that and were never *quite* the same.

 

Kovalev was a damned near perfect fighter. Slick enough too. I did think he beat Ward in the first one. Not many guys at 175 I’d take over a prime him in the modern era besides Roy.

I think drugs and alcohol played a key part in his downfall.

 

Prime Kovalev was a monster and a joy to watch. An offensive machine with underrated boxing skills that made him a hard fighter to beat Just a shame how quickly he fell off after getting robbed from the first Ward fight and just never recovered after that.

It’s honestly amazing how 50 year old Bernard Hopkins was able to last the distance against Kovalev even after getting dropped.

 

Both Kovalev and Bernard were excellent fighters.

It seemed to me that Kovalev tried to prove to everybody that he could outbox Bernard.

He never put his foot down on the pedal until that final round.

I think that he could have gotten him out of there had he have fully committed to it. But he wasn’t super aggressive until the end.

 

No, just no. Prime Kovalev was an elite boxer who does not get humiliated by anyone in history. Loses maybe, but not humiliated.

RJJ's resume of taxi drivers and tomato cans is not spectacular, particularly after he was flattened by Glen Johnson and Tarver.

 

Kovalev took Ward to school and beat that cheat like a Pimp beats his Hos. Then it was all taken away. It is very reasonable for him to believe that there was nothing he could do to regain his titles, and he was right, see fight 2 where he lost after 3 low blows ended the fight.

 

He's my favourite light heavyweight but he'd be butchered against either Bivol or Beterbiev because of his physical frailty

 

Literally, everyone in this thread is wrong. And that includes me and whatever I was probably going to say.

 

Roy didn’t have a resume just full of cans.

He beat better fighters than Kovalev did. And with ease.

And why would we talk about guys like Glen Johnson, when we’re looking at a prime Roy?

Glen would have been lucky to have taken a round off of pre-HW version of Roy.

 

Absolute BS.

Kovalev did not in any way take him to school.

Laughable.

He also could have been fired up for the rematch, due to a sense of injustice.

He didn’t just lose after taking 3 low blows.

He lost because there was nothing coming back.

He’d already been broken before the final round.

The fight was called off because he was hunched over taking unanswered shots.

Yes, the last one was absolutely low. But that fight was getting stopped wherever that last punch landed.

It’s hilarious to me that people believe that a low blow caused the stoppage.

It didn’t.

Go and look at the earlier rounds where he was tagged to the body with 100% clean body shots.

He desperately looked at Weeks for help.

That’s when he’d given up.

If that last shot had landed high, wide or had missed completely, it was getting pulled.

It wasn’t decided specifically on that last shot.

The guy had nothing left to give at that point.

 

Yeah, because Kovalev has a murderer row of opponents

 

This is hilarious isn’t it.

Roy fought and beat better fighters.

Roy’s second tier wins were basically on the level of almost all of Kovalev’s.

What would Roy have done with a guy like Chilemba?

 

I used to think that Roy was the greatest then I grew up and found out that he was a roided up cheat.

 

I think many haven't actually watched jones, just watched some highlights and judge him on his decline

How many other fighters in the last 30 years have analysts and fans alike thought that a fighter could surpass Ray Robinson, or at least a GOAT contender. Floyd and Manny were closest

Max Kellerman was right. When Roy was in his prime and Pretty Boy Floyd was entering his, nobody thought Floyd was better than Roy p4p

For a decade he was superman