Sergey Kovalev will return to the ring against Robin Safar

Sergey Kovalev, the main star of domestic professional boxing of the last decade, will return to the ring in February after a break of almost two years. As part of an extremely prestigious show in Saudi Arabia, Kovalev will fight in the first heavyweight division (up to 90.7 kg) against the undefeated Swede Robin Safar.

It was announced that Sergey Kovalev will fight against Robin Safar ESPN. The fight will take place on February 17 in Riyadh as part of an exceptional boxing evening in terms of excitement and prestige. They were ensured by the status of the central fight in his program. In it, Briton Tyson Fury and Ukrainian Alexander Usik compete for the title of absolute world heavyweight champion. The performance of Sergey Kovalev and Robin Safar will be among the key ones on the undercard of the show.

This is a rather interesting event. In the past decade, Sergei Kovalev was perhaps the brightest star in Russian professional boxing. He earned a reputation as a phenomenal knockout artist, for a long time held the light heavyweight championship title (up to 79.4 kg) in different versions, losing and winning it, and received several prestigious individual awards, including even the award for the best boxer of the year, regardless of weight category in 2014 from the publication The Ringwhose classifications are the most authoritative (he got it after a confident victory over the American legend Bernard Hopkins).

However, then something like a long black streak appeared in the sports biography of Sergei Kovalev. In November 2019, he met with Mexican Saul Alvarez, who was unanimously recognized at that moment as the best fighter in the world, who jumped from middleweight to light heavyweight for the fight with Kovalev.

In 2022, Alvarez lost to another Russian light heavyweight, World Boxing Association (WBA) champion Dmitry Bivol, but that match ended in his opponent’s defeat by knockout in the 11th round and his loss of the World Boxing Organization (WBO) title.

It was assumed that Sergey Kovalev would soon be hunting for the championship belt again, but first the coronavirus pandemic disrupted his fight against Cuban Sullivan Barrera, and then Kovalev got into a very unpleasant situation. In January 2021, he was scheduled to fight Uzbek boxer Bektemir Melikuziev. But immediately before the match, it turned out that Kovalev’s doping test contained banned synthetic testosterone.

Sergey Kovalev was lucky that anti-doping sanctions in professional boxing are much softer than in Olympic sports. However, in any case, his break in performances was enormous – almost two and a half years. Usually this period is associated with an inevitable loss of tone. But Kovalev, despite his veteran age (he will turn 41 in April), not only did not refuse to continue his career, but decided to take a rather bold step. He moved from light heavyweight to heavyweight.

Sergei Kovalev’s debut in the new category turned out to be quite successful. In May 2022, he beat Bulgarian Tervel Pulev extremely convincingly on points. It seemed that the expectation of rapid advancement to the top of the category hierarchy was also justified. The WBC even sanctioned Kovalev’s fight with the famous South African boxer Thabiso Mchunu, who had previously challenged the title, assigning the match the rank of qualifying, that is, identifying a contender for the belt. But it fell through, officially due to “low television interest.”

However, there is no doubt that Kovalev still has a chance to break through to a title fight.

The fact is that the top heavyweight division is experiencing something like a crisis associated with a shortage of truly top fighters. None of its champions – neither Noel Mikaelyan (WBC), nor Arsen Gulamiryan (WBA), nor Chris Billam-Smith (WBO) – can be classified as outstanding boxers without reservations, and the IBF belt is generally vacant at the moment.

To get closer to the title, Sergey Kovalev must cope with an opponent whose potential is a huge mystery. Robin Safar, 31, has an impeccable record of 16 victories. At the same time, in some of the matches he fought extremely impressively, knocking out his opponents with blows to both the head and body. But the problem is that all of these opponents – even Antonio Brown and Deshaun Webster, who he got in previous fights – seem to be, at best, strong middle peasants without any serious ambitions or prospects.

Alexey Dospehov