(VIDEO) The Exciting Prospect of Sergey Kovalev vs Artur Beterbiev

Good video Rummy, here's my take from a few months ago with a few alterations.

I know I made the Beterbiev thread hyping him up, but I try to be reasonable with my analysis.
So the Tavoris win was brutal and amazing but.... Tavoris didn't have the power he had early in his career when he stepped up his competition, he's had 1 KO in his last 8 fights. His power has dissipated or maybe it was never as great as people thought it was.
He didn't have the power to KO Campillo, but Fonfara and Kovalev did.
He didn't have the power to KO a shot Fulgencio Zuniga, yet Bute got him out in 4, and Pavlik got him out in 9 back in 2005.
He didn't hurt Hopkins but Pascal did.
He got Mack out in 8 at LHW, but Froch got him out in 3 at SMW.
Tavoris has had his confidence absolutely destroyed by first Campillo who should have won, then Hopkins and lastly Adonis dominated him from start to TKO. So I'm sure he came in mentally shot and after nearly a year off, probably a ****load of ring rust.

Beterbiev knew Cloud probably didn't have the pop to hurt him anymore and was probably rusty so he jumped him early may have even caught him cold. Not only that, but Adonis gave him a pretty bad beating, and we don't know just how much that match took out of him.

Now on to Campillo the destruction of Gabriel was impressive as hell Beterbiev dropped him twice the second brutally KOing him, but as I said before....Campillo was destroyed by Kovalev who dropped 3 times and got him out a round earlier than Beterbiev 2 years ago, then Campillo came back and got dropped badly by Fonfara after he'd dominated him for the majority of the match, if you look at that KO Campillo looked thoroughly depressed and seemed disheartened more than anything, I think he just quit. He was having flashbacks of the Sergey match from a few mionths before. Then he looked average against Williams Jr. until he lucked out when Williams got cut and quit like a b***h, but the reality is Campillo is shot to **** and Artur win over doesn't really prove very much to me, I want to see beterbiev in there with a live body before facing Sergey. I want him to fight an Eleider Alvarez, or Shabranskyy or Sullivan Barrera or Egor Mekhontsev, who aren't a shells of their former selves and who have power to hurt Beterbiev, and if he can easily deal with them maybe I'll get excited by the prospect of Kovalev vs Beterbiev.

Thus far in his career Artur has taken 1 to 4 rounds to get really worthless to okay opposition out of there, but lets not forget Kovalev has been getting decent to very good competiton out in the first 2 or 3 rounds for the last couple of years, sometimes with glancing blows, and yes if he'd really tried he could have gotten BHop out in the first 2 or 3 rounds, but he wanted to make Hopkins look bad by beating him at his own game. And you can make the argument he did TKO Pascal in 3 rounds, he blurred his vision and ruptured his eardrum in the 3rd, and the match could have been stopped there.


Beterbiev fought more intelligently against Campillo, but he still did he fair share of bum rushing at times. What happens if he gets sloppy and tries that s*** with the Krusher. Do you really think that bumrushing a guy who KO's people with glancing blows would make a lot of sense, that's the kind of amateur move that gets you KO'd brutally Pacquiao, or Paul Williams style. So no he won't just wipe out Kovalev in 2 rounds, he would definitely fight more cautiously at first, Beterbiev is not stupid, and a full frontal attack on Sergey is a very dangerous proposition that would most likely backfire badly just look at what happened when BHop tried to lunge. We haven't even seen Kovalev have to kick his punches into high gear, what happens when he does, how brutal could his full force counters be. There are a lot of variables we have to consider before declaring with ease that either one gets blown out. styles make fights, and Kovalev and Beterbiev know each other well from the ams and probably know each others strengths and weaknesses very well. Can Beterbiev beat Kovalev maybe but Kovalev has just as good a chance at beating him.


Beterbiev is a beast, but so is Kovalev, so I'm torn between these two monsters, as to who would win, but I don't think it'll be a blowout that some people are thinking now either way. They'll both fear each others power which may make them fight more tentatively, and if it turns into a pure boxing match Kovalev has the edge.

Kovalev may have lost him twice in the amateurs but that doesn't hold much significance to me Sergey has clearly improved immensely since his amateur days, Jackson has helped become a full fledged complete boxer, and I don't think at this point Beterbiev has near the skillset of Sergey. As of right now I still favor Sergey by a wide margin.