Kathy Duva “Guardedly Pessimistic” About Ward-Kovalev Rematch Chances

Promoter Kathy Duva, who heads Main Events, hit NY Wednesday to bang the drums for the Saturday tango between their guy Curtis Stevens and Golden Boy Promotions’ David Lemieux.

Duva likes the possibility of this 160 faceoff being a good rumble, because, as with when Micky Ward took on Arturo Gatti, both men know that there will not be infinite chances for them. She thinks Curtis knows that he needs to be the busy Curtis, and let the hands go. She thinks too often we are seeing boxing businessmen, who sometimes seem to go soft, and not go all out being nasty, because both are making big money. Maybe that happened Saturday, between Keith Thurman and Danny Garcia, she theorized.

Duva also told me that Sergey Kovalev is “raring to go.” He went to Russia, to visit fam, and now will be looking to fight in “the middle of the year.” She didn’t want to speculate if that fight will be a rematch with Andre Ward. “I like to be guardedly pessimistic,” she said, preferring a less is more strategy. No sense in putting updates to the press, basically.

I don’t pretend to know if this thing gets made. Ward got the W in a tight tight fight. Will he want and negotiate as the A side thus want A side leverage or will there be an admission that this was such a close fight, that we basically have an A and a B plus side on the two sides of the table?

Other Main Events news: the Jersey outfit has been doing more shows at Mohegan Sun, in CT. We could see a Main Events show April 15, with HBO Latino cameras present.

Duva told me she was not striking on this International Women’s Day, because women who run companies are exempt. She told me that International Women’s Day is, for the record, big in Russia, and that Kovalev always sends her a hello note on this date.