Malawian light heavy weight boxer, Isaac Chilemba, says he is not scared fighting Russian Sergey Kovalev on July 11 at the latter\u2019s home.<\/p>\n
Chilemba (24-3-2, 10 KOs) was responding as to what he thought of fighting at DIVS Palace of Sports in Ekaterinburg where Roman Simakov died due to injuries he suffered after being knocked out by Kovalev in 2011.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhatever happened that time is not what is going to happen now. We cannot put two situations together. This is a different time, so I don\u2019t think about what he did or what happened. All I believe is that the pressure is on Kovalev because he will be fighting in the place where he knew something happened when he fought there last time,\u201d Chilemba, 28, told ringtv.craveonline.com <\/em><\/p>\n The unified light heavyweight world title holder Kovalev, 32, wants to defend at home his three belts against the Malawian, who is based in South Africa. American firm, Main Events, manages both boxers.<\/p>\n Kovalev, who will be making his eighth title defence, told ringtv.craveonline.com <\/em>that he was determined to defend his title in his first fight since a one-sided, seventh-round knockout of former champion, Jean Pascal, in their rematch on January 30 in Pascal\u2019s hometown of Montreal.<\/p>\n \u201cI am so excited to fight in my home country of Russia. It gives me great pride to bring my titles home at last. I would like to thank my manager, Egis Klimas, my promoter, Kathy Duva and Igor Altushkin, of Russian Copper Company, for making this dream of mine a reality. Chilemba is a tough opponent and I will take him on,\u201d said Kovalev (29-0-1, 26 KOs).<\/p>\n The Blantyre-born fighter stands a chance to seize from the Russian champion world belts for the International Boxing Federation (IBF), World Boxing Association (WBA) and World Boxing Council (WBC).<\/p>\n Main Events\u2019 boss Duva earlier told the media that she expects a thriller.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is no easy fight for Sergey, though. Sergey wanted a challenging opponent for his return to Russia and someone who would help him prepare for Andre Ward in November, assuming he emerges with a win, \u201dshe said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Malawian light heavy weight boxer, Isaac Chilemba, says he is not scared fighting Russian Sergey Kovalev on July 11 at the latter\u2019s home. Chilemba (24-3-2, 10 KOs) was responding as to what he thought of fighting at DIVS Palace of Sports in Ekaterinburg where Roman Simakov died due to injuries he suffered after being knocked […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":26586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26583"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26587,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26583\/revisions\/26587"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}