Saturday 30 November 2013

Sergey Kovalev v Ismayl Sillakh

In the first of two world title fights in Canada this evening Russian Sergey Kovalev (23-0-1, 21) destroyed Ukrainian challenger Ismayl Sillakh (21-2, 17) and made his first title defense.

The first round was a genuinely good one for Sillakh who moved well, established his jab and actually made it look like he had a chance as he avoided Kovalev's power whilst landing at will.

What Sillakh did in the opening round was quickly forgotten as Kovalev knocked him down in the opening seconds of round 2. Sillakh got to his feet at the count of "3" though the challenger looked like he was gone, seconds late her was gone as a huge right hand sent an unconscious Sillakh hard to the canvas. This time Sillakh had no chance and everyone knew that this was "ovah".

We'd hope that Kovalev will be fighting the winner of the upcoming Stevenson/Bellew fight in early 2014, though other than than it's possibly only Bernard Hopkins that would leave us with an interesting contest. For Sillakh this is likely to be his only title fight for a while, unfortunate for him it's come against a man who is destroying fighters. A loss to Kovalev isn't embarrassing but it could well be the sort of thing that a fighter never really recovers from.

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