Duva Talks Russian Customs, Pascal Being Next, Jan. ESPN Date, Future of Main Events

I asked Kathy Duva, the boss at Main Events if she’s thinking this Sergey Kovalev-Bernard Hopkins clash is a coin flip scrap in her mind.

Her response: “There is a Russian custom to which Sergey adheres and which follows very closely to my dear departed husband’s belief in not jinxing yourself, so we don’t talk about that. Whatever happens, happens. Obviously, we’re very confident or we wouldn’t be here.”

And if…I mean, when Kovalev wins…will he fight Adonis Stevenson next?

“I really don’t know,” she said during a Tuesday chat. “I think that when he wins we’ll sit down and figure out what we’ll do next. There are always other options. Jean Pascal, in some respects, is a bigger fight. That’s an option. Who knows. Two years ago when Sergey signed with us, I was told by many knowledgable people that the division is boring, and dull, that there are no fights…now I can think of so many interesting fights, be it next fight, or a year or two from now…there seems to be an inexhaustible supply. There are names coming up I can see two, three years down the road may be a megafight. I won’t obsess about what happens if he wins. When he wins, we’ll worry about what’s next, next week.”

Duva said that she isn’t crazy-worried that her NBC cable series will be no longer after their Nov. 8 finale. Main Events has an ESPN date on Jan. 30, which might be topped by Isaac Chilemba, or Karl Dargan or Steve Cunningham, she said, and they will know in a week or so. “Other than the last three years, when we had the NBC deal, we’d come to November and we’d be pretty much looking over the cliff (uncertain in what direction the company would go). We’re still here. We’re pretty much on that cliff again, but we’ll be alright. It forces to be more creative, we have a lot of conversations about things which I’d ruin if I talked about, so I won’t…but we’ll be alright.”

The promoter promoted, in closing, her Saturday night NBC cable show, which will go off air right as the HBO undercard scrap pitting Sadam Ali versus Luis Carlos Abregu kicks off.

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