“Sergey Kovalev did not, as he promised, retire Jean Pascal at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Quebec, on Saturday night. Pascal, kept on his stool at the end of the seventh round, will fight again; he will have as little difficulty finding a trainer willing to salvage and refurbish him as he will an opponent looking for a career best win. What he will not find, however, is the vitality Kovalev beat out of him. That beating—cynical, protracted, delivered with a calm born not of emotional detachment but of genuine relish—will forever be linked to the man who applied it.”

Read Make Him More Pain: Sergey Kovalev TKO7 Jean Pascal on The Cruelest Sport.