Winners and Losers from Saturday’s HBO World Championship Boxing

As a reminder, the win-loss column only tells part of the story. Read on as we look at the big winners—and losers—from Saturday night's action in Montreal.

Winners and Losers from Saturday’s HBO World Championship Boxing
Alex Burgos

Kovalev Pascal 2 - Vincent Ethier 2
Photo by Vincent Ethier/Interbox

On Saturday, January 30, 2016, HBO’s World Championship Boxing kicked off with a double header starting with a Welterweight tussle between Dmitry “The Mechanic” Mikhaylenko (21-0, 9 KOs) and Karim “Hard Hitta” Mayfield (19-3-1, 11 KOs).

The main event featured a Light Heavyweight rematch between Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (29-0-1, 26 KOs) and Jean Pascal (30-4-1, 17 KOs).

Mikhaylenko and Mayfield had a lot riding on their fight for different reasons, one was getting his first crack on HBO, while the other was possibly looking at his last.

Mikhaylenko has the backstory–HBO featured a captivating piece involving Mikhaylenko’s father’s passing and his mother’s illness–so the stage was set for him to impress boxing fans against a last-minute replacement.

The promotion for the grudge match between Kovalev and Pascal was filled with animosity. Pascal continually brought up Kovalev’s questionable comments regarding black fighters, vowing to fight ignorance and “teach this Russian a good lesson,” (via Bloody Elbow).

Kovalev went into the rematch with Pascal not only trying to bash Pascal’s face in, but he also had to try to spark more interest in a future clash with undefeated pound-for-pound fighter, Andre Ward.

As a reminder, the win-loss column only tells part of the story. Read on as we look at the big winners—and losers—from Saturday night’s action in Montreal.

Loser: Dmitry Mikhaylenko

Sergey Kovalev v Jean Pascal II
Photo by Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

“You never get a second chance to make a first impression,” is how the old saying goes.

When you’re from Russia and you are childhood friends with a bad-ass fighter like Ruslan Provodnikov, boxing fans get a certain image of who you might be and what you might fight like.

Unfortunately, we learned early on that Dmitry Mikhaylenko is not Ruslan Provodnikov.

HBO’s unofficial judge, Harold Lederman wasn’t impressed with Mikhaylenko, wondering out loud why the Russian couldn’t even knock Mayfield down.

In his big-time television debut, Mikhaylenko won, but he also lost.

Loser: Karim Mayfield & Ben Bauatista

Karim Mayfield Ben Bautista

Karim Mayfield came in on short notice to challenge undefeated contender, Dmitry Mikhaylenko in Saturday nights co-main event.

Mayfield had a tough decision to make because on the one hand he was being offered a great opportunity to spring an upset against a young, undefeated fighter live on HBO, but on the other hand he only had about a week to prepare for the bout.

If Mayfield declined the fight, he could have been saying goodbye to his final opportunity to fight on HBO. But, as Mayfield stated before the fight, short notice fights are part of the game and he was ready to seize the moment. Or was he?

Mayfield came out charging in Round 1, but fell flat (not literally, although that may have been better) a few rounds later and looked gassed throughout most of the bout as he swung aimlessly.

That makes sense given the fact that he hadn’t fought in over a year, but still, he took the fight and knew what he was getting into.

Mayfield wasn’t ever in the fight and the entertainment factor was non-existent so it’s hard to imagine him getting another chance to fight on HBO.

Mayfield was berated by numerous people on Twitter, including 2012 gold medal Olympian, Claressa Shields.

Mayfield responded, but Shields still slayed.

And lastly, to make matters worse, Mayfield’s trainer, Ben Bautista was god-awful.

Winner: Sergey Kovalev

Kovalev Pascal 2 - David Spagnolo Main Events
Photo by David Spagnolo/Main Events

Sergey Kovalev had one goal on Saturday night–teach Jean Pascal a lesson.

Working behind a vicious jab–kind of like the one that Gennady Golovkin used to pulverize David Lemieux–Kovalev stalked Pascal throughout the fight and methodically beat him down.

The scariest part about Kovalev’s attack was that he let up on the gas multiple times, seemingly prolonging the ass-whooping that he was dishing out.

Pascal stumbled around the ring for the last couple of rounds until Freddie Roach finally ended things in the corner after Round 7.

To recap, Kovalev came in pissed, beat the breaks off of Pascal, took $50,000 from him thanks to a side bet, laughed like a sinister Mortal Kombat boss and had an epic encounter with Adonis Stevenson (more on that later).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Andre Ward injured himself just watching the shellacking Kovalev gave Pascal.

Loser: Jean Pascal

Snapshot_20160130_233839

After cutting ties with trainer Marc Ramsay, Jean Pascal teamed up with Freddie Roach in hopes of putting together a winning game plan to take down Sergey Kovalev.

Pascal said all of the right things in the build up to the fight and some folks got the impression that he might be able to build off the few successful moments he had in the first fight.

While I didn’t pick Pascal to win, I was one of those aforementioned folks who thought that he would have some good moments in the rematch.

Instead, the 33-year-old Pascal continued his downward spiral (which was brought on from the first Kovalev beating and continued against Yunieski Gonzalez) on Saturday night and no matter who is in his corner moving forward, Pascal has some serious soul searching to do.

Winner: HBO

Snapshot_20160130_225144

Aside from the co-main snoozer, HBO was a big hit on Saturday night. The commentating was solid–especially Bernard Hopkins and Harold Lederman who didn’t hold back in their critiques–and the build up for future fights was solid.

Fans got to hear from Andre Ward who was interviewed on air to confirm that a fight with Sergey Kovalev is indeed in the works for somewhere in the not-to-distant future.

Former HBO fighter, Adonis Stevenson, rushed the ring after Kovalev’s victory in hopes of convincing the public that he is the man at 175 and that he actually wants a fight with the Krusher.

Stevenson

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Instead, Stevenson was trolled on Twitter and laughed at by Lamps and B-Hop on air. Oh yeah, and Kovalev called him “Chickenson,” mocked him with duck noises and flipped him the bird, which was all awesome too.

HBO can rest easy knowing that they have Kovalev-Ward on deck and that Kovalev-Stevenson becomes less and less interesting each day.

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