By Ben Jacobs

As BoxingScene.com reported on Friday, former light heavyweight champion Gabriel Campillo announced his retirement from the sport. Campillo made that important decision after suffering back to back knockout defeats, last year, to rising contenders Artur Beterbiev and Marcus Browne.

The landscape of the light heavyweight division is stronger than ever.

One of the more anticipated fights in the sport is contracted to happen in the fall. There is a deal in place where former super middleweight king Andre Ward (28-0, 15KOs) will challenge Sergey Kovalev (29-0-1, 26KOs) for the WBO/WBA/IBF world titles.

Almost a year after Campillo’s scandalous loss to Tavoris Cloud in February of 2012, ‘Chico Guapo’ stepped into the ring with then rising danger man Sergey Kovalev, now recognised as one of the best fighters in the sport.  In hindsight a third round loss to the Russian was no disgrace at all and Campillo believes that Kovalev would have a good chance at defeating Ward should that bout come to fruition.

“Kovalev can beat anyone put in front of him but he is not unbeatable.  He can beat Ward, it’s a fight we all want to see but I don’t have a clear favourite as yet.  Maybe the amount of time Ward has been out and not fighting boxers of this quality could cost him.  If I were his manager I might look to avoid that fight!  As a boxer he will look to fight him, so there’s a conflict there!," Campillo explained to BoxingScene.com.

“Kovalev is in his prime and we don’t know how long that will last but there is also Artur Beterbiev who is very strong, for sure he was the hardest puncher that I fought.  I would favour Kovalev in that fight but anything can happen with a strong guy like Beterbiev.”