The reason why Kovalev will never be the best light heavyweight

He's lucky he's still got any hair left on his head at all. He comes from a city called Chelyabinsk and it's the most contaminated spot in the world. Here's some excepts from a couple of different articles about it.


CHELYABINSK :
The Most Contaminated Spot on the Planet

For forty-five years, Chelyabinsk province of Russia was closed to all foreigners.Only in January of 1992 did President Boris Yeltsin sign a decree changing that.Shortly afterwards, I made my first trip to this region, which later Western scientists declared to be the most polluted spot on earth.

In the late 1940's, about 80 kilometers north of the city of Chelyabinsk, an atomic weapons complex called "Mayak" was built. Its existence has only recently been acknowledged by Russian officials, though, in fact, the complex, bordered to the west by the Ural Mountains, and to the north by Siberia, was the goal of Gary Powers's surveillance flight in May of 1960.

The people of the area have suffered no less than three nuclear disasters: For over six years, the Mayak complex systematically dumped radioactive waste into the Techa River, the only source of water for the 24 villages which lined its banks.The four largest of those villages were never evacuated, and only recently have the authorities revealed to the population why they strung barbed wire along the banks of the river some 35 years ago.Russian doctors who study radiation sickness in the area estimate that those living along the Techa River received an average of four times more radiation than the Chernobyl victims.

In 1957, the area suffered its next calamity when the cooling system of a radioactive waste containment unit malfunctioned and exploded.The explosion spewed some 20 million curies of radioactivity into the atmosphere.About two million curies spread throughout the region, exposing 270,000 people to as much radiation as the Chernobyl victims.Less than half of one percent of these people were evacuated, and some of those only after years had passed.

The third disaster came ten years later.The Mayak complex had been using Lake Karachay as a dumping basin for its radioactive waste since 1951.In 1967, a drought reduced the water level of the lake, and gale-force winds spread the radioactive dust throughout twenty-five thousand square kilometers, further irradiating 436,000 people with five million curies, approximately the same as at Hiroshima.

In the past 45 years, about half a million people in the region have been irradiated in one or more of the incidents, exposing them to as much as 20 times the radiation suffered by the Chernobyl victims





The villagers of Muslyumova grew increasingly ill following contamination of their water. The number of birth defects and cancer deaths soared, but the authorities refused to take remedial measures. Statistics show that gene-mutations in the villages just outside the evacuated zone were 15 times the average for the Russian Federation. The local authorities attributed the high level of birth defects among newborns and the high mortality rates to a low standard of living.

A report on the health of the people living on the banks of the Techa River was published in 1991, which showed that the incidence of leukemia increased by 41% since 1950. From 1980 to 1990, all cancers in this population rose by 21% and all diseases of the circulatory system rose by 31%. These figures are probably gross under-estimations, because local physicians were instructed to limit the number of death certificates they issued with diagnosis of cancer and other radiation-related illnesses. According to Gulfarida Galimova, a local doctor who has been keeping records in lieu of official statistics, the average life span for women in Muslyumovo in 1993 was 47, compared to the country average of 72. The average life span of Muslyumovo men was 45 compared to 69 for the entire country.

Chelyabinsk regional hospitals were not allowed to treat the villagers and they were sent to the Ural Centre for Radiation Medicine. The medical data of the UCRM was classified until 1990. Records of the UCRM chart the decline in health of 28,000 people along the Techa and all of them are classed as seriously irradiated. Since the 1960s, these people have been examined regularly by public health officials.

According to the head of the UCRM clinical department the rate of leukemia has doubled in the last two decades. Skin cancers have quadrupled over the last 33 years. The total number of people suffering from cancer has risen by 21%. The number of people suffering from vascular diseases has risen 31%. Birth defects have increased by 25%. Kosenko carried out a small epidemiological study of 100 people selected at random. From this group 96% had at least five chronic diseases (heart diseases, high blood pressure, arthritis and asthma), 30% had as many as ten chronic conditions. Local doctors estimate that half the men and women at child bearing age are sterile.

Even today, the local population still does not know the actual levels of radioisotopes in its home grown products. German scientists who did a field study in Muslumova in 1996 have measured some food samples in the villages and found astonishing levels of radioactivity, 17,000 becquerrel per kg in fish, and 8,000 per kg in vegetables (in Europe, products with more than 600 bequerrel are taken off the market). Only since 1989, the villagers have started to get information about the dangers of the radioactive contamination of their river.

 

On a lighter note. Here's an interesting interview with his trainer John David Jackson where he talks a lot about Sergey. It's pretty long but it's worth a listen if you're fan of Kovalev.

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Lol maybe.

 

No worries, the interview with John David Jackson is really interesting too. :good

 

Marciano.

 

lol sorry.

One of his previous opponents Gabriel Campillo is also bald too. So is Ismayl Sillakh, who Kovalev had been scheduled to fight in April 2012, back when Sillakh was undefeated and considered by many to be the heir apparent to the 175lb throne and a sure-fire future P4P star, which kind of puts the theory to rest some have proposed (Tony Bellew being one of them) about Kovalev's management being reluctant to put him in with punchers.