Kathy Duva: Golovkin-Stevens is a Sleeper For Fight of the Year

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    Often when fans think of promotional companies the first names that come to mind are Bob Arum (Top Rank) and Oscar De La Hoya (Golden Boy) but Kathy Duva the CEO of Main Events in a short period has made quite a name for herself. HBO has Top Rank, Showtime has Golden Boy and now NBC has Main Events. Kathy has pulled NBC Sports from the depths by making great fights and now NBC Sports often broadcasts must see fights. Kathy and Main Events have been happy with their partnership. “NBC is the greatest partner in the world because they let the matchmakers make the matches.”

    One of the fighters that Kathy has showcased that is moving on to bigger things is Curtis “Showtime” Stevens. Now Stevens has signed a contract for the biggest fight of his career versus Gennady Golovkin and Kathy has high hopes for one of her marquee fighters. “It’s a fight that I think will be a sleeper fight of the year.” There were rumors that surfaced a few weeks ago that Stevens denied the original offer sheet for the fight because he may was ducking Golovkin, but Main Events was just holding strong for a better offer, “it was always the fight for Curtis, but you never take the first offer,” stated Kathy.

    The fight will be hosted on November 2nd in New York City— which is Stevens’s backyard. When asked if he she thinks the pressure is on Stevens to shine in front of his hometown Kathy stated “I don’t know, in Curtis’ mind he’s defending his home turf but the way I’m looking at this fight is I got a guy that punches like a truck, he’s in his hometown, and all the pressure is on the other guy.”

    Another one of Main Events top fighters is newly crowned WBO Light Heavyweight Champion Sergey Kovalev. After Kovalev strung together a streak of great knockouts against Gabriel Campillo, Cornelius White, and most recently Nathan Cleverly, many fans have been excited to see the Russian Crusher back in the ring. When a fighter has a knockout percentage as high as 86%, it’s often hard on find opponents willing to step into the ring. Kathy said for Kovalev that isn’t the case with him. “I’m hearing that people do what to fight him, I’m not surprised,” she continued, “If people want to be the champion of the world they have to fight the champion of the world.” Sergey Kovalev used to be a fighter that you would have to weigh the risk versus the reward but now that he is a champion Kathy feels that fighters will be more willing to step in the ring with him, stating, “Most fighters understand this is the risk you have to take.” She continued “There’s no shame in losing to Sergey Kovalev.”

    Now that Main Events is one of the top promotional companies with marquee fighters, both Stevens and Kovalev have made the transition from NBC sports to HBO. Kathy embraces the extra attention that her fighters have been getting and now that Stevens has an HBO date, she said that Kovalev is ready for his second date as well. “Sergey would like to step up into the HBO champion level fights and he will to fight them in any order they want to send them over.”