Sometimes fighters surprise you in who they say hit the hardest or was their toughest opponent and this is the case here with Kovalev.
Sergey Kovalev had his final fight of his boxing career just gone in Russia and ended his career in style by knockout.
He fought some great fighters over the years like Andre Ward, Bernard Hopkins and Canelo Alvarez but speaking to Talk Sport before his final fight he said:
“The toughest? I’d say a guy named Darnell Boone. I fought him early in my career around my tenth fight I think. That was a brutal fight for me. I had just come back from Russia and hadn’t fought in a while. My manager set me up against Boone, who had a record of something like 17-15. I was exhausted during that fight. After the fifth round, I don’t even remember what happened.”
He added:
“He was an eight-round fight and for the last three rounds. I was fighting on autopilot completely drained. Somehow, I won but Boone disagreed with the decision and demanded a rematch. We fought again later, in my nineteenth fight. Kathy Duva the promoter told me if I won that rematch, she’d sign a contract with me. At that point I’d fought eighteen fights without earning any real money. My manager Egis was covering everything. My apartment, food, even paying for my opponents. That rematch was a turning point.”
Great stuff and people forget Egis Klimas has done brilliant things for boxers like that when they started out.
Klimas has been around a while now and managed the likes of Oleksandr Usyk and Lomachenko as well of course.