I recently had a chance to speak with Main Events promoter, Kathy Duva. Main Events was founded in 1978 and has played a big role in the sport of boxing, having promoted legendary fights such as Sugar Ray Leonard vs. Tommy Hearns and Lennox Lewis vs. Mike Tyson.

In this interview, I got Duva’s thoughts on her companies top fighter, light heavyweight champion, Sergey Kovalev. Kathy Duva discusses Kovalev’s winning effort against Bernard Hopkins and also looks forward to the upcoming Kovalev vs. Pascal match up. Kathy also spoke about a possible fight between Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev later this year and also a potential mega fight between boxings biggest stars, Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. Here is what Kathy Duva had to say.

Robert Brown: I want to get your views on Sergey Kovalev’s fight with Bernard Hopkins. What were your impressions of the lead up and the fight?

Kathy Duva: When we got to the press conference, what I saw were two alpha dogs sniffing each other, and they both knew it. Bernard is accustomed to getting to that position and see it in the other guys eyes and know that he owns him. He knew he had met his match at that point, I could see it, I was standing right next to them.

I’ve been fortunate enough to see this going all the way back to the beginning of my career when we promoted Leonard vs. Hearns in the early 80’s — that’s the first time I ever watched two great fighters stand face to face like that and realize all that went on just at the press conference. At that point they both knew that the other guy wasn’t gonna back down.

I think Sergey had this hanging over his head that he’d never gone more than eight rounds because he never had to, he was knocking everybody out and he kind of knew he was gonna have to get there eventually and do it. Every fighter has to get past that mental barrier of getting that twelve rounds under their belt and knowing that they’re still gonna be fresh and knowing what it’s gonna feel like.

I think Sergey decided that night, “I’m gonna do this tonight, I’m not gonna go crazy trying to knock this guy out because I don’t have to and I’m gonna outbox him because I can.” He was tired of hearing that all he could do was knock people out, so he showed us all a new level of his game that very few people knew was there and it was a joy to watch, it was wonderful.

Robert Brown: Now Kovalev is going to take on Jean Pascal, what are your thoughts on that fight coming up?

Kathy Duva: Sergey is starting to follow in the tradition of great champions and that is, he’s going to the other guys’ hometown because there’s a good financial opportunities there that doesn’t exist here. He’s becoming a bigger star in America — remember, he’s not American, he’s Russian. So when he fights in America, we’re just building a home for him here. As his popularity grows, so will his audience.

Jean Pascal is a national hero in Quebec and whenever he fights, on a slow night he gets ten to fifteen thousand people out to watch his fights, on this one it will be over twenty thousand. We simply were not able to make the economics work here in the US the way they do in Canada, so we went to Canada to get the money.

If you look back at the history of the sport, that used to be normal — especially before everything was on television. Champions would go into the other guys’ hometown because that’s where the money was. Sergey’s feeling was, “I don’t care where I fight him, I’ll knock him out or dominate him no matter where we are.”

Sergey Kovalev’s not gonna dictate terms to the point where it’s gonna hurt him economically and I admire him for that and I appreciate the fact that he is willing to do that. In doing so, I think he’s gonna become a big star in Quebec in particular, where there’s a huge market for boxing. We’re building his brand internationally and that’s how it’s done, that’s how it used to be done and we’re gonna continue in that tradition with him.

Robert Brown: Are you expecting Sergey Kovalev to knock Pascal out or because of Pascal’s known durability, do you think this might be a fight that goes twelve rounds?

Kathy Duva: What I love about Sergey is that I don’t think I’ve seen him fight two people the same way. Every time he gets in the ring, we see something else that he does. With Pascal, Sergey is gonna size him up and decide what to do and then he’s gonna do it.

I’ve seen everything from at the end of the first round with Sillah, after sizing him up, he literally walked across the ring and left him there. With Bernard Hopkins, he sized him up and even after knocking him down in the first round he said, “Okay, I’m not gonna get cocky here, this is a legend I’m standing in front of.”

He will size up Jean Pascal, then he will decide what to do with him and it will be interesting for all of us to find out what that’s gonna be. It’s not like he’s a predictable fighter where you get to see the same thing all the time and I think that’s part of what makes him so interesting.

Robert Brown: Assuming Kovalev beats Pascal, are you hoping that a fight with Adonis Stevenson will happen?

Kathy Duva: Sergey wants to win all four titles and Stevenson happens to hold one right now so therefore of course Sergey would like to win that title. If Stevenson still holds the WBC belt by the end of June, then that’s gonna be the fight we target next.

The WBC, we asked them a couple of weeks ago, we went to the convention and we asked them to order a fight between Stevenson and the winner of Pascal vs. Kovalev. They agreed to do so, to make the winner of Pascal and Kovalev the mandatory for the WBC championship.

If Adonis Stevenson still holds that title, then sometime between September and November it’s likely that Stevenson or whoever holds that WBC title will either have to fight Kovalev or they will have to vacate. That will create another opportunity to win that title, so we’ll see what happens.

As Adonis Stevenson has proven time and time again, you can’t make him fight. I’m under no illusion that we’re gonna somehow make him get in the ring, but if he wants to get in the ring with Sergey Kovalev, the of course we want to make that fight.

Robert Brown: Do you think Adonis Stevenson has been ducking Sergey Kovalev up until this point?

Kathy Duva: Yeah, all we hear is “quack, quack, quack” but we’ll see what happens. I’d be pleasantly surprised if he changed his mind.

Robert Brown: Kathy, I want to get your promoters view on a hot topic in boxing. Mayweather vs. Pacquiao is once again in talks. Do you think Bob Arum and Al Haymon and their unwillingness to work together is what’s stopping that fight from taking place?

Kathy Duva: If Floyd Mayweather wanted the fight to happen, I think it would happen, I don’t know if he does. It’s easy to hide behind somebody if you don’t want a fight to happen. My personal opinion is that at this point in time, it appears Manny Pacquiao really does want the fight to happen. I think he does, based on the things he’s said and done recently.

As far as Bob Arum is concerned, I gotta say, Bob Arum has been involved in making big fights with people he can’t stand many times, including with my own husband years ago. When they hated each other more than I can describe, and believe me, they hated each other as much if not more intensely than the relationship Arum has with Al Haymon right now.

Arum’s relationship with Don King over the years has been just as acrimonious, yet the big fights always got made then. Something’s changed, I don’t know if it’s Bob but I do know that when you see someone obstructing over and over again, after a while you start to notice a pattern. I see a pattern.

You see fighters giving up their titles rather than take a big fight, you see them moving over to Showtime when a fight with HBO is done already. You see constant avoidance of serious challenge by one person’s fighters. I don’t know how on earth you can’t see this pattern. I think whether it’s the fighter or the so called ‘advisor’ I really don’t know, but clearly they agree with each other or this wouldn’t be happening.