By Dan Ambrose: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) had better start working on his punching power if he’s serious about fighting IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) in 2016.
Kovalev’s trainer John David Jackson sees the 31-year-old Ward as too flawed and too weak for him to be able to hold the hard hitting Kovalev off of him for long. Jackson has been studying Ward’s game for a while now, and he sees four basic flaws in his game that will get him knocked out if/when he steps inside the ring with his fighter Kovalev.
Jackson hasn’t seen any improvement in Ward’s game over the years to fix these flaws, and he plans on having Kovalev take advantage of them if Ward does elect to face him next year. We’re still not sure whether Ward will take the fight with Kovalev.
Until a contract has been signed, you have to remain skeptical about the chances of Ward moving up to 175 to face a ferocious puncher like Kovalev. Ward has it too good at 168 in making simple title defenses. He’s not getting any of the better fighters to face him, but he is able to make title defenses against the contenders the WBA ranks.
“If he [Ward] fights Sergey he’s in trouble. He can’t keep Sergey off him; he ain’t got the firepower to keep Sergey off him,” Jackson said to Fighthype.com. “He’s going to run, hold and grab the whole fight? He can’t do that. Sergey catches you everywhere. It’d be an interesting fight while it lasted but Sergey going to win that fight, trust me,” Jackson said.
It’s pretty obvious that Ward is going to try and keep the fight on the outside all night long against Kovalev, because he’s not going to try and smother him like he does against his usual opponents because he’s not faced a puncher in years since his fight against Carl Froch in 2011. That was a case of Ward fighting a guy that was hopelessly lost on the inside.
Froch had no inside skills to speak of, and it made it easy for Ward to win a 12 round decision.
Ward would need to be able to punch with enough power to keep Kovalev off of him for the 12 rounds, because if he can’t, Ward will be hit with some monstrous punches round after round. Paul Smith was able to hurt Ward in the 7th round of their recent fight when Smith loaded up on one single right hand in that round.
Kovalev hits with better power than that each time he throws a punch, which means Ward would need to be able to handle Kovalev’s power. Ward has good skills, but he’s no different from anyone else that Kovalev has faced in terms of his ability to take a hard shot. Journeyman Darnell Boone had Ward hurt in their fight in 2006. That shows you that Ward does have a weakness when I comes to taking shots.
“You think with one of Sergey’s shots, is he gonna be able to stand around with him? When Sergey gonna hit you he’ll change your whole perception of a fight,” Jackson said. “I like Ward, I like what he did at 168 but he makes 4 major mistakes in boxing. Not one of them has been corrected and if he hasn’t corrected them by now, they ain’t never gonna correct them.”
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