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In the end, we should have known it was too good to be true. The mere thought of Adonis Stevenson clashing with Sergey Kovalev had every boxing fan drooling. There would be no boxing match here, just a head-on collision between two murderous punchers at the height of their powers.
We’ve pretty much collectively given up on the Floyd Mayweather vs. Manny Pacquiao dream bout. Even if it does eventually take place, the fight just doesn’t pack the punch it once did. But there were other matches to salivate about, and Stevenson vs. Kovalev was at the top of the list.
While Stevenson was busy spending 2013 smashing the likes of Darnell Boone, Chad Dawson, (poor Chad Dawson) Tavoris Cloud, and Tony Bellew, Kovalev enjoyed the year by pounding on the likes of Gabriel Campillo, Cornelius White, Nathan Cleverly, and Ismayl Sillah.
Both went 4-0. Both scored four knockouts. Both seemed to be gunning for each other.
AND IT WAS SO DAMN CLOSE.
But while Kovalev happily proclaimed during post-fight interviews that it was his wish to take on Stevenson, “Superman” himself provided some eerie foreshadowing after his bout with Bellew. While he said he would fight Kovalev, he quickly added “if the money’s right.”
Apparently, to him it wasn’t.
And now, a fight that just a couple of weeks ago appeared to be a done deal, is dead. Forget fighting each other, Stevenson is no longer even on the same network as Kovalev.
As quickly as the enigmatic advisor Al Haymon added Stevenson to his ranks, boxing lost another fantastic fight.
Stevenson will now kick off his 2014 by taking on Poland’s Andrzej Fonfara Saturday night on Showtime. Presumably, he’s setting up a future unification bout with Bernard Hopkins, a bout that will bring him a solid pay day. It just won’t juice the fans up quite the same way as a Kovalev bout.
So what do we make of Stevenson? Certainly, it’s hard to blame a guy who is just a few months shy of his 37th birthday, a guy who was a relative unknown until just recently, for opting for bigger paydays over bigger bouts.
At his age, he probably doesn’t have a whole lot of time left to cash in on his newfound fame. And while Fonfara won’t pose the same health risk as the seemingly psychotic, melon-smashing Kovalev, Hopkins is an easy-out for no one, even at an age where he should be golfing or selling random kitchen equipment.
But as boxing fans, this one still stings. The intrigue of a Stevenson vs. Kovalev bout comes from the fact that both men throw absolutely brutal shots with terrible, terrible intentions.
We could dissect the fight for hours.
What if Kovalev landed his right? What if Stevenson connected with that southpaw straight-left? Who lands first? Who takes a better shot?
Right now, the only question we have is what the hell happened? Or maybe the question is, can we just get one of these fights to pan out? The truth is, it’s never been harder to be a boxing fan. We of course have two networks dividing up fighters, but we’ve also had the two biggest promotional companies at a long term impasse.
We aren’t getting all of the fights we could be seeing, and while Oscar De La Hoya and Bob Arum have seemingly started to inch closer to a resolution, we still don’t know how far off one will be.
We didn’t have any of those problems with Stevenson vs. Kovalev.
Until we did. And with it goes another dead fight, added into the list along with Gennady Golovkin vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
As for the fighters themselves? They’ll probably be fine without each other. Stevenson will fight for the first time on Showtime, and he’s very heavily favored. He’ll probably set up a big fight with the aforementioned Hopkins in early 2015.
Kovalev’s future is a bit murkier, but he’ll most likely just keep gleefully smashing everything in front of him.
Perhaps he’ll be able to draw somebody from 168 pounds into the mix. Carl Froch would be an interesting challenger, provided he can get by George Groves, which is not a given.
Maybe Andre Ward will actually want to, you know, fight again, and he’ll make the jump to 175 pounds.
Ward has cleaned out the super middleweight division, and a fight with Kovalev would represent a fascinating contrast in styles. Right now, nothing is really certain, other than the fact that a fantastic championship fight between two monsters is not going to happen.
They’ll move on, and we will too. For one thing, no matter who he’s fighting, Stevenson is a can’t-miss attraction.
He has an engaging personality to go with the cement in his fists. Maybe Fonfara will surprise us Saturday and we’ll get a brawl.
All we can really do is hope that the divergent paths Stevenson and Kovalev are on will one day merge, and we’ll get a collision.
For now, we’ll watch them and wonder what if…
