by David P. Greisman

Nearly every sporting event has a favorite expected to win and an underdog likely to lose. There are no guarantees, of course, because otherwise there would be no suspense and no upsets — no tiny Chaminade beating the touted Virginia men’s college basketball team, no Buster Douglas ending Mike Tyson’s reign as heavyweight champion.

Upsets wouldn’t mean as much if they happened more often. More often than not, the anticipated result is the actual one. We watch anyway, not only to see what happens but also how it happens — to see how long the underdog lasts and how much resistance he gives, to see how well the favorite performs and how much trouble he has.

The rematch between Sergey Kovalev and Jean Pascal was a fight in which the question wasn’t so much how Kovalev would beat Pascal but rather how soon Kovalev would defeat him.

The result was inevitable. Their first fight ended in the eighth round. Their second fight was officially over after the seventh. It was otherwise over before it even began.

They first met in the ring in March 2015. Kovalev was a dominant light heavyweight beltholder who had unified three world titles in his previous win, a unanimous decision over Bernard Hopkins, who was nearly 50 years old when they fought but was still one of the three best boxers in the division and had never been beaten as convincingly as Kovalev beat him.

Pascal was only five months older than Kovalev and had only been in six more fights than Kovalev but was otherwise at a completely different point in his career, a declining former champion who had briefly been king from 2010 into 2011, a nine-month reign in which the only defenses were a draw with Hopkins and then a loss to Hopkins. He hadn’t scored a win of great consequence in the division since then, but he was still significant enough a figure at 175 and in Quebec that Kovalev and his team sought to fight him.

Kovalev wanted name opponents while waiting for a hopeful fight with lineal light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson. There had been on-again, off-again negotiations; the fight was far more off than on. Pascal was also still enough of a star that him challenging Kovalev could draw a good crowd to Bell Centre and make both men even more money than the HBO license fee would provide.

Kovalev was the favorite and Pascal the underdog, yet there were no guarantees. Pascal claimed he had never been knocked down before. Kovalev also hadn’t faced many with Pascal’s power, and definitely none of those who had similar power were on Pascal’s level.

Kovalev hurt Pascal first, scoring a knockdown in the third when a right hand left Pascal leaning through the ropes. Pascal did a better job in the fifth and sixth; he hit Kovalev more often and made Kovalev land less often. Kovalev adjusted, regained control, hurt Pascal in the eighth and finished the fight with two hard rights that led the referee to stop the bout. Pascal felt the end had come too quickly, that he’d deserved a chance to continue. Instead, he’d have to wait for a second chance.

Kovalev’s promoter, Kathy Duva of Main Events, said afterward that she was interested in a rematch but that it would need to come later. Kovalev wanted to face Stevenson. That didn’t happen. Kovalev also owed a fight to mandatory challenger Nadjib Mohammedi. That did happen. Kovalev made quick work of Mohammadi in July 2015.

Pascal appeared on the undercard against unbeaten prospect Yunieski Gonzalez to help set up a potential second fight with Kovalev. There are no guarantees. We sometimes watch to see how the favorite performs and how much trouble he has. Pascal struggled against Gonzalez, winning a unanimous decision that many observers felt Gonzalez actually deserved.

There was reason to wonder whether Pascal had faded too far to face Kovalev again. There’s an axiom that a boxer who wins the first fight in a rivalry will win the rematch more easily. That’s not always the case. The losing boxer can make adjustments. He can arrive in better shape and better prepared and with more knowledge about what to do differently. His opponent may not be as good as he was when he won.

Yet Kovalev had taken Pascal’s leads and counters well when they landed flush. Pascal had not been able to handle Kovalev’s power. And that was a better version of Pascal than was seen months later against Gonzalez.

They went forward with the rematch anyway, once again at the same arena in Montreal. An announced crowd of 9,866 turned up. The fight was on pay-per-view in Canada, meaning more cash to be grabbed while Kovalev continued to build a fan base — and sought to build toward a potential fight with former super middleweight champion Andre Ward that Kovalev’s team hoped would take place later in the year.

Pascal recognized that he couldn’t be the same fighter in the second fight that he was in the first. He hired Freddie Roach, the Hall of Fame trainer most famous for his work with Manny Pacquiao but who had also been in the corner of numerous other notable titleholders, contenders and prospects.

“I realized I need to improve on and correct certain mistakes I made in my loss to Kovalev,” Pascal said in a statement announcing the hire in November.

Whatever work Roach did, Pascal sure didn’t show up the same fighter he’d been.

He showed up worse.

“We are just tweaking some small mistakes to deliver big changes,” Pascal had said less than two weeks before the fight.

“The same strategy won’t work,” Roach had said back then. He soon added: “I thought he [Pascal] fought a poor fight. I thought he was looking for a knockout too much, and he can't do that. You go out there and box. Use your boxing ability.”

Pascal couldn’t change who he was in just a couple of months. He wasn’t even who he once was before.

Kovalev nevertheless didn’t try to make quick work of Pascal. He instead took a more measured approach in the opening round, establishing his jab, thudding it first to the body, then sending out a right hand lead to the body, then beginning to target both of them upstairs, then mixing them up to keep Pascal aware of each shot and their potential destinations, keeping him guessing and leaving him open. At one point, Kovalev’s jab knocked an off-balance Pascal down in the first as Pascal stepped forward with jabs of his own. It was erroneously ruled a slip.

Some fighters who are supremely confident that they can hurt their opponents will seek to do so expressly. Kovalev was supremely confident that he would hurt Pascal eventually. He felt it better not to force the moment given that the moment would come anyway by his force. He also knew that Pascal could throw quick and hard leads and counters from awkward angles, and so he used simple footwork to move away from shots that had caught him before and incorporated more feints to try to throw Pascal’s timing off. It didn’t hurt that he didn’t get hurt badly by the best punches Pascal had landed last March.

Through two rounds, Kovalev was landing regularly. Pascal was landing rarely. He was throwing too little as well. Pascal already had a history of throwing 20 fewer punches per round, on average, than other light heavyweights whose fights had been covered by CompuBox. Pascal’s previous eight fights had seen him land an average of about 12 punches per round out of every 34 thrown. Six minutes into the rematch, Pascal was averaging just 5 landed punches per round out of every 21 thrown.

He did better in the third round, with a good right hand landing early and a hard left hook hitting Kovalev’s head later on. Kovalev again was unshaken, and again he shook Pascal. This time it was in the fourth round, when a right hand wobbled Pascal with about a minute to go. Kovalev’s offense poured forth in the fifth while Pascal’s drought dwindled further, a beating so one-sided that all three judges scored the round 10-8 even though Pascal never went down.

What little fight Pascal had left had been taken out of him when Kovalev began to hit him with clean, hard shots and when Pascal failed to do the same — and failed to do any damage even when he did land. He still looked for single shots to try to catch Kovalev. He spent more time looking for shots than he did launching them. Pascal threw just 18 punches in the fourth round, 5 punches in the fifth, 8 punches in the sixth and 15 punches in the seventh. He threw only 17 power shots in total in those four rounds, and he landed only four.

He’d landed 68 of 200 punches, combined, in the seven rounds and one additional minute that the first fight went. He was just 30 of 108 in the seven rounds of the sequel.

The only reason it lasted that long is because Kovalev wanted it to, since he disliked Pascal so much that he wanted to punish him, prolonging the pain when a knockout would’ve been a manner of mercy. He was a cat toying with a captured mouse, picking Pascal apart instead of putting him away.

Kovalev was doing this even though he and Pascal had put $50,000 toward charity on the line in a bet made beforehand. Pascal didn’t even bet on himself to win; he merely bet that he could last longer this time.

“If you don’t go out there and try and show me that you can win this fight, I’m stopping it,” Roach had told Pascal after the damaging fifth.

“Jean, you’re getting beat up too much. I’m going to stop the fight,” Roach had said after the sixth.

“One more,” Pascal had responded. Roach refused, but Pascal pleaded until he prevailed.

“You better throw your hands,” Roach said. “You can’t just go to the ropes and lay there.”

It didn’t matter where Pascal was. There wasn’t enough of him left anymore. Kovalev had demoralized and destroyed what little remained.

Pascal didn’t need to take any more. Roach didn’t need to see any more. He told his fighter it was over the moment the seventh round ended. The second fight was 63 seconds shorter than the first.

It was otherwise over before it even began.

“After the first fight I knew he wasn’t the same fighter for the second fight,” said Kovalev’s trainer, John David Jackson, at the post-fight press conference. “That showed. So I knew he wouldn’t have much resistance as the rounds would begin to go on. The fight played out the way I thought it would play out.

“Sergey is a devastating puncher. It’s unreal. These guys can’t really take it,” Jackson said. “The body wasn’t made to take that kind of punishment. Pascal proved that. He was brave. But I guarantee when he wakes up tomorrow [Sunday] morning he’s gonna wish he got knocked out in the first round.”

The result was inevitable. Their first fight had come at a time when Kovalev didn’t have a deal with Stevenson and needed a name opponent who was credible and marketable. Pascal was still both in 2015. But in 2016, this name opponent was just there to be an opponent with a name.

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com