Sergey Kovalev is preparing to sign off as a professional fighter with a victory when he meets Artur Mann next week.<\/p>\n
They will fight in Chelyabinsk, Russia, over 10 rounds on April 19, with Kovalev citing inactivity as his reason for hanging up the gloves at the age of 42.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kovalev has boxed just twice in six years, defeating Tervel Pulev in 2022 and losing to Robin Sirwan Safar last May.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Speaking to BoxingScene, Kovalev said only having two fights since his 2019 loss to Canelo Alvarez was behind his decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause of very big pauses between the fights, if I was fighting every five or six months, I\u2019d want to continue, but now I fight every two years and it\u2019s no good with very big pauses,\u201d Kovalev said.<\/p>\n
Kovalev is 35-5-1 (29 KOs) and he meets the 22-4 (13 KOs) Mann over 10 rounds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know nothing about him, but U was given the choice of five or six opponents and I chose him,\u201d admitted the former light heavyweight king, who estimates he will weigh around 185lbs for his final bout. \u201cHe has the most technique [of\u00a0 the opponents he could have selected]; he\u2019s the most dangerous and the best boxer. Other guys were very amateur-like.\u201d<\/p>\n
And then Kovalev will walk away from the sport and spend time with his children, having been afforded the opportunity to bid farewell to his own fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis final fight will be like a holiday for boxing fans in my hometown,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to get the victory and it will be like a holiday for me too, if I win.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sergey Kovalev is preparing to sign off as a professional fighter with a victory when he meets Artur…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13465,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[9081,1935,9080,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-13464","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-artur-mann","9":"tag-boxing","10":"tag-sergey-kovalev","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13464","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13464"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13464\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}