The second to last HBO main event went as expected.
There wasn’t a lot of excitement when rising young light heavyweight titleholder Dmitry Bivol (15-0, 11 KOs) signed on to defend his WBA belt against faded former titleholder Jean Pascal (33-6-1, 20 KOs) in Atlantic City. The consensus with the matchup was that Bivol would have his way with Pascal who might end up being too tough for his own good yet again. The fighters basically played the expectation out in the ring last night.
From the opening bell, the fight was a mismatch. The 27 year old defending titleholder had his way with the man 11 years his senior from start to finish. Bivol comfortably controlled every single round while Pascal was reduced to firing back increasingly pointless single shots that became increasingly without purpose as the fight wore on. In fact, the bout quickly became a monotonous watch. Each three minute set was basically the same as the one that came before it.
Jean Pascal has always been tough and durable, however. It wasn’t a surprise to me that he made it twelve. Only Sergey Kovalev has ever stopped him and we all know about The Krusher’s power. Plus, that was more on accumulation than anything else. Bivol never reached that level of abuse no matter how comfortably he was ahead. He landed many nice flurries, but none did enough damage to get anywhere near a finish at any point.
This was the textbook case of a fight in which the punch stats tell the tale. Dmitry Bivol outlanded Pascal 217 to 60, 32% to 17%. The French-Canadian veteran only landed 5 jabs the entire fight according to the numbers and I didn’t even see that many. There was little of interest happening in what may prove to be HBO’s final male fight given Chocolatito’s reported drop out of the longtime king of the sport’s final show in December.
Speaking of television, the most important note coming from this fight is that Dmitry Bivol is now a television network free agent. Bivol will be a hot commodity on that now highly competitive market.
Also on the show was Olympic bronze medalist Murodjon Akhmadaliev (5-0, 4 KOs) of Uzbekistan picking up his fifth career win over regional level opponent Isaac Zarate (16-4-3, 2 KOs). The super bantamweight to watch separated himself from Zarate after just a couple rounds and the fight quickly became a beating behind his relentless pressure. The stoppage came on the feet in the ninth, but it really could have come at any point from the seventh round on.
