I'd still favour him over most at 175 if he gets his head and team right. CW would be a stretch tho surely?
He is probably lacking motivation to stay at 175 and will fight at 200 and who could blame the guy after how boxing has treated him. At least at CW he will get a fair shake because there are no privileged Americans that need protecting. Unless Ward moves up of course.
He needs to go and see the Wizard of Oz and get a heart. Just playing, what he probably needs is somebody that he can trust to handle him as a fighter. He has the tools physically, he just needs to mentally rebuild.
I realy feel the urge to puke when reading some comments here. Kovalev was such a consisten champ in the last 5 years. He beat the **** out of prime cleverly IN HIS BACKYARD, destroyed hopkins in his hometome, travelled twice to canada to beat the **** out of pascal, beat the **** out of ward in his own hometown and got fuked and then lost a gay ball busting porn rematch he did not know he was participating in. Just let him get everything on the line and well see , but dont act as if this guy was done and was koed 3 times in a row.
I think Kov stays at 175 and builds towards fighting Stevenson or Smith Jr, at this stage he has to be concentrating on securing his future and those look to be the best paydays available to him. No business sense in a move to CW, high risk fights with low financial reward.
With the right trainer, he can. But given his Age and mental state, his task will be a lot harder now with Bivol, Gvodzyk, Beterbiev than It was with Cleverley's and Cornelius White's of the World.
A calm acceptability of a loss is also dependent on how we lose. If we fought in a stupid way that we should have known better not to-then having made a stupid effort will only cause self directed anger. Just like when we do something stupid and are publicly embarrassed. For example, making a great effort but not listening to the corner's advice about lateral movement. You know, like the advice Teddy Atlas was constantly giving Mikael Moorer when Moorer fought Foreman and he totally disregarded and got knocked out cold in a fight he was winning on points.. Or the advice ignored by Con to box evasively that last round and who was also winning on points when he fought Louis but got knocked out cold for ignoring it? Both were efforts but left a bitter taste since good advice should have been taken.
Wait aren't you one of the guys that think that Marciano would still beat everyone, including the top SHWs? Kovalev is bigger than Marciano was (1 inch taller, and is same weight walking around) and would probably have beat him h2h. But no, they called fighters that size hw's back then so I guess the terminology makes all the difference and Rocky would win after all. Never mind. Anyway, Kovalev should stay put at LHW and try to get the Smith Barrerra winner and Stevenson, and if he can get those fights, win or lose should call it a career.