by David P. Greisman

There are many approaches to building a boxer into a more complete fighter or at least into an attraction. There is no one-size-fits-all method, no perfect philosophy. The path from prospect to contender to titleholder must be tailored to who the boxer is and isn’t, what he can and cannot become, and whatever resources are available to his promoter and manager.

There are pitfalls to each end of the spectrum. Give a fighter too many easy wins and he may not wholly develop his skills, refine his technique or garner enough experience so as to handle the most difficult moments and opponents. But put a boxer in too tough, too soon and too often and he might suffer a loss that serves as more than a setback, shattering his confidence and stagnating his career path.

Easy victories can leave questions unanswered. Hard outings can leave a fighters’ flaws exposed.

Sergey Kovalev flew into the boxing-loving city of Montreal riding a streak of knockouts and routs. With heavy hands that flow forth seemingly as effortlessly in the ring as his deadpan delivery in interviews, Kovalev had scored knockouts in all but three of the wins in his record of 27-0-1. That lone draw, a technical draw in 2011 off of what was ruled an accidental foul that left his opponent unable to continue, was the lone interruption in a string of 13 fights to end by KO or TKO.

He had blown through Nathan Cleverly in less than four rounds to win a world title in August 2013. He had defended it by demolishing Ismayl Sillakh in less than two rounds that November. He took Cedric Agnew out in the seventh round of their fight in March 2014, then blew by Blake Caparello in about a round and a half in August of that year. Together, those four victories had been in fights scheduled to go a combined 144 minutes, only to last a total of 37.

The only occasion on which he went past eight rounds came when Bernard Hopkins lasted the full distance with Kovalev this past November. Hopkins, while nearly 50 years old at the time, was still good enough to be considered one of the three best light heavyweights in the world and held two of the four major world titles. He was a master boxer who could make fights ugly and could make fighters look foolish. Kovalev instead out-boxed Hopkins and dominated him as no one else had, scoring a complete shutout on the scorecards.

Before, Kovalev had impressed with his power. Now he had shown off his skill and technique. Yet there were still some who found cause to wonder about him going into this past Saturday’s fight with Jean Pascal in front of Pascal’s roaring hometown crowd at the Bell Centre, a hockey arena where fans had long since found cause to cheer for the kind of sustained fisticuffs that can happen in a ring but not a rink.

They wondered how Kovalev would deal with Pascal’s awkward offense and fast counters. They wanted to see how Kovalev handled Pascal’s punches. Whereas those people were curious, Kovalev’s handlers at promotional company Main Events were confident.

Nearly three years ago, when no other promoter had signed Kovalev to a contract, manager Egis Klimas called up Main Events and asked for them to give his fighter a chance. The promoter paired Kovalev with Darnell Boone, a journeyman whose record is deceiving, who takes fights on short notice against an array of talent but has given some very good fighters tough moments and has given some prospects surprising losses.

Boone is the same hard-hitting opponent who knocked down a young Andre Ward in 2005, who knocked out future light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson in 2010, and who had previously fought Kovalev to a split decision later that same year, with Kovalev barely leaving with the win.

Their rematch in June 2012 ended much more quickly and decisively, Kovalev beating Boone in less than two rounds.

“I know Sergey’s chin is a lot better than people thought it was,” said Kathy Duva of Main Events. “When I saw him take Darnell Boone’s best shot the first time he ever fought for us, I knew I wasn’t going to have to worry about his chin.”

Pascal could take a punch himself. He had never been knocked down before, he claimed, not as a pro nor even as an amateur.

Both would get a chance to crack away and see if their shots could shake and shatter each other.

The cracks first began to show on Pascal in the third round. A little past the halfway mark, Pascal rested on the ropes, seeking to lure Kovalev into a trap. Kovalev sent a jab to the body, paused for a moment and then threw a right hand upstairs. Pascal rolled forward with a counter cross that landed flush. Kovalev took it fine but backed off slightly, and Pascal advanced with confidence, launching a looping overhand right that caught Kovalev’s left glove.

Kovalev stood in front of Pascal, moving his hands in front of him, not giving Pascal an indication of what would be coming next and when. The first shot was a jab, which landed. The next was a right hand, which Pascal dodged by weaving to his left. He hadn’t moved out of range, though, and so Kovalev shifted his hips and threw a hard left hand, knocking Pascal’s head back. Kovalev wound up with a right hand that hit hard, shaking Pascal and sending him to the ropes.

Pascal steadied himself momentarily. Yet in the final seconds of the round, Kovalev’s jabs forced a retreating Pascal to the ropes, where Pascal couldn’t evade a right hand that hit him in the head and knocked his body partially through the top two ropes. Pascal’s right glove touched the canvas as well, and it was the first official knockdown of his career. The bell rang, giving Pascal a minute to recover.

Kovalev sought to pick back up from where the previous round had ended, beginning the fourth with a barrage. Pascal wasn’t going anywhere, though, and with more than eight rounds potentially left, Kovalev instead sought to reserve his energy and efforts for later on. Pascal had recovered enough that when Kovalev sent out a jab about a minute in, he responded with a counter right hand that landed accurately. He moved well, making Kovalev miss and making Kovalev aware of the fast and powerful swings that could be coming back his way.

Pascal’s flashy shots won him the fifth and sixth rounds, the first the judges had awarded him on the night. They would be the only rounds he’d win.

Kovalev’s adjustments actually began in the sixth, when Pascal’s output began to dwindle. He changed his rhythm, using more jabs upstairs and sometimes incorporating the bolo punch motion with his right arm before sending forth a shot, changing up his timing and throwing off Pascal’s ability to counter.

When Kovalev had appeared tired, Pascal had come on. Now Pascal was the winded one and Kovalev was taking over.

Early in the eighth, Kovalev threw two right hands and a left hook to the body, and his follow-up shots forced Pascal to the ropes. Pascal ducked his head down and threw a counter left hook, but Kovalev simply took a step back, dodged the shot and came forward with a hard right hand, a left hook and another right. Pascal was hurt again. Kovalev soon landed a good left that had Pascal falling back along the ropes. Kovalev closed in and then fell to the canvas, a sequence the referee, Luis Pabon, ruled as a slip.

As Pabon watched Kovalev get off the mat, Pascal stumbled backward into the red corner, then tripped over a towel that someone from Kovalev’s corner was using to wipe moisture from the ring. He remained on his feet, and Pabon brought Kovalev to a neutral corner to wipe his gloves on the referee’s shirt. Pabon turned his head to see that Pascal had walked out of the red corner and stumbled again across the ring to the other neutral corner. Kovalev motioned toward Pascal with his glove.

“You OK?” Pabon asked.

Pascal remained in the corner, momentarily propping his left elbow on the top rope. Kovalev came forward and wound up with a big right hand that landed hard on Pascal’s head. Pascal leaned down and to the right, his gloves dropping at his sides as Kovalev landed another right. Pabon jumped in. Pascal protested.

It was more of a fight than Pascal had put up in recent moments. While he’d battled back before while hurt, he hadn’t given Pabon the best indications of his ability to do so again.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t the cleanest of endings, not when Pascal was still on his feet and hadn’t been rendered senseless. Pabon made a quick decision that Pascal was no longer defending himself competently and was no longer able to be competitive. There are some who felt it was too quick. There are others who reached the opposite conclusion.

Pascal claimed after the fight that he was coming back and was on his way to knocking Kovalev out, a line that can be excused for a fighter who had never been stopped and was perhaps blinded by his own pride.

It hadn’t been easy for Kovalev, although it had seemed in the third round as if that would be the case. Yet the way the fight went may end up being the best of both ends of spectrum. He stopped a former champion who had been sturdy in the past and showed Saturday that he still belonged toward the top of the division. Kovalev withstood some hard punches, adjusted and left with the victory. That he had been caught by Pascal’s blows didn’t expose him. We had known Kovalev could be hit. We now have more evidence that he can take heavy shots.

He went to Montreal and conquered their hero, just as he had gone to Wales to vanquish Cleverly. In an era when fighters find reasons not to travel to hostile territory or give other excuses why they won’t face opponents, Kovalev is fueled by his foes’ fans.

“It pushes me, makes me motivated more to show that everybody’s wrong,” he said after beating Pascal. “I fought a lot of times everywhere when I was amateur, and I won every final fight in hometown of my opponent.”

Kovalev’s drive is a product of his development. He has blown away titleholders and contenders. He took shots from Pascal and then took him out. He continues to be set on keeping the three world titles he has and adding a fourth, the one held by Adonis Stevenson, who is also based out of Montreal, where the fans would once again show up in hopes of seeing their champion take out the visiting villain.

Kovalev’s steeled himself for challenges like those. His mettle has been forged with fire.

The 10 Count

1. Eyebrows went as high as the numbers on the scale after Chris Arreola weighed in at 262.4 pounds for his fight Friday night on the same card as the “Premier Boxing Champions” doubleheader on Spike TV. That is the second highest weight of his career, just six tenths of a pound less than when Arreola stopped Brian Minto in 2009.

And when one of the fighters in that doubleheader, Roberto Garcia, fell out of his fight against Shawn Porter at the last minute, some wondered whether we’d end up seeing Arreola in all his girth and glory.

“Word is that with him coming in at a rotund 262 pounds that his handlers would rather not have him exposed to this audience in that state,” wrote Steve Kim of this very website, though there was no indication of the veracity of that rumor.

Porter’s fight with late replacement Erick Boné ended up opening the show, but it ended early. And so we got Arreola, who jiggled and sagged and had a much tougher than necessary outing against an otherwise gritty Curtis Harper, a 12-3 fighter who would’ve been blown out years and pounds ago.

Arreola was 23 pounds heavier than he was in his rematch loss to Bermane Stiverne last May, and 20 pounds heavier than in his win over Seth Mitchell back in September 2013. In fact, the last time Arreola was even in the 250s, never mind the 260s, was when he came in at 256 pounds in September 2010 for a decision over Manuel Quezada.

He put Harper down in the first round, but Harper was able to recover, then began to adjust and make Arreola miss and land some hard shots of his own. Arreola looked as if he’d hurt his right hand or arm, which provides some excuse, but he also would’ve been better able to move and deal with the injury and his opponent if, you know, he were actually in shape.

Arreola escaped with an eight-round decision win. But once again his body is an indication of his mind — an otherwise tough brawler in the ring just doesn’t give his career the best chance. And members of his team are complicit, enabling him to be this way. They continue to work with him even if he doesn’t respond to their attempts at instilling discipline. Much of that may be because they love him and want to be there for him.

But this reflects on them, even if not as poorly as it does on him. While Arreola is 34 and has reached his limit, his name still carries enough cachet that he could end up in significant bouts against up-and-coming heavyweights. Arreola’s team shouldn’t just shrug their shoulders and accept their percentages for his fights, given that their paychecks could go up if Arreola earns his way into earning more.

2. “I’m ready to get back in the gym,” Arreola was quoted as saying afterward.

Why start now?

3. The funny thing is that Arreola vs. Harper, a heavyweight fight of little consequence, was still far more entertaining than the heavyweight fight on HBO on Saturday that was to decide which of two men would challenge for a world title in the future: Vyacheslav Glazkov vs. Steve Cunningham.

How bad was Glazkov-Cunningham, combined with the show opener in which Isaac Chilemba won a decision over a dispirited Vasily Lepikhin? The show’s promoter, Kathy Duva of Main Events, didn’t mince words in describing what those bouts turned out to be:

Those two fights “had looked really good on paper,” she said after the show, “and looked like crap on canvas.”

4. Speaking of that scatological word:

At the arena, the lines at multiple men’s rooms were out the door in the moments just before Glazkov-Cunningham got under way. I held it and ran back to press row to see the fight. And instead of going No. 1, I wound up watching that pile of No. 2…

5. Maybe Chris Arreola’s weight is all part of a secret plan to get him a sponsorship with Nutrisystem. After all, Al Haymon’s “Premier Boxing Champions” needs as many streams of revenue as possible.

“Before, Chris Arreola was a rotund also-ran. But with Nutrisystem, he fought his way into a shot at the heavyweight title.”

It’s just a shame that Arreola has let so much of his career go to, uh… waist.

6. The puns aren’t always my fault. Sometimes they come by request. I swear.

Last Friday night, a middleweight prospect named and nicknamed Thomas “Cornflake” LaManna lost by technical knockout on ShoBox to Antoine Douglas.

By Saturday afternoon, Twitter user @marcusknockout sent this message along:

“If there isn’t a Cornflake pun in Monday’s column, I’ll be extremely disappointed.”

Challenge accepted.

You could say that Douglas turned “Cornflake” LaManna into shredded wheat. It’s not wholly accurate to write that Cornflake got pancaked. Instead, it’s more accurate to describe him as an even simpler breakfast food:

Toast.

7. Speaking of “Premier Boxing Champions” and its need for commercial support in order to be financially sustainable, Friday’s episode on Spike TV featured numerous spots with nationally known brands in addition to its sponsor, Corona beer.

Those brands included PayDay and Kit-Kat candy bars, the H&R Block tax preparation company, the MetroPCS cell phone company, AT&T, Selsun Blue hair products, fast food restaurants McDonald’s, Popeyes, and Wendy’s, and Ice Breakers gum.

I have no clue whether these are already regular advertisers on Spike programs or were spots sold by PBC’s team, and I have no idea how the ad revenue for those spots works.

But given that I mentioned how little national advertising beyond Corona there was on the NBC show, it’s only proper to mention what I saw in the early going alone on Spike.

8. I can’t speak to the commentary during the Spike TV show and how they compared to the team that handled the first NBC episode of “Premier Boxing Champions,” as I watched last Friday’s broadcast at a sports bar without sound.

But I can at least relate one good line and an interesting footnote that came from one of the people joining me at the sports bar — Aris Pina, who was in Montreal for CompuBox to work the next night’s card featuring Sergey Kovalev vs. Jean Pascal.

Pina noted, for one, that Sugar Ray Leonard, who is a commentator on the NBC broadcasts, has stoppage wins over Bobby Haymon, who was the brother of Al Haymon, the powerful boxing adviser who is the man behind PBC, as well as over Floyd Mayweather Sr., the father and trainer to Haymon’s superstar fighter, Floyd Mayweather Jr. Those wins came in a span of less than five months in 1978.

Then Pina suggested the perfect fight for a future PBC show on another network that will be airing the series, a bout that will involve two flabby heavyweights:

“Chris Arreola vs. Antonio Tarver on Bounce TV,” he said.

9. Boxers Behaving Badly: Former three-division titleholder Adrien Broner has a court date set for April 9 after allegedly driving under the influence earlier this year, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.



“Broner refused the breath test, an act that could result in his drivers license suspended for a year if convicted,” the article said.



He is facing one count of operating a vehicle while impaired and one count of committing a marked lanes violation, according to online court records. The case dates back to Jan. 11, but apparently is only surfacing now in the newspaper because of a court hearing that was held March 11. Meanwhile, an assault accusation against Broner from November 2014 was dismissed this past February, according to online court records.



Broner won a wide decision over John Molina Jr. on NBC last week on the debut card of “Premier Boxing Champions.” Now a junior welterweight, the 25-year-old is 30-1 with 22 KOs and 1 no contest.

10. They call him AB — Alcoholic Beverages…

“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