Sanchez: Kovalev is too much for Ward

By Boxing News - 09/24/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: Trainer Abel Sanchez is sticking with his pick of IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) having too much power and size for former super middleweight champion Andre “SOG” Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) for their fight in less than two months on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Sanchez has noticed that the 32-year-old Ward has lost a lot from his game since coming back to the sport in 2015 following a two-year layoff from boxing. Ward hasn’t looked like the same fighter despite being put in with three soft opponents in a row in Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera and Alexander Brand. Sanchez says that Ward was given every opportunity to look like a star by being put in with those three fighters, and he either couldn’t or wouldn’t do the job.

Ward failed to shine in those fights. He’s now being put in with the best fighter in the 175lbd vision in Kovalev, and Sanchez sees Ward as lacking the punching power, size and sharpness to keep the Russian fighter off of him. Sanchez feels that the Kovalev vs. Ward fight will wind up just like the Kovalev vs. Bernard Hopkins fight two years ago in 2014.

In that fight, Kovalev had too much power for Hopkins, and he was able to dominate him from the outside and inside with his hard jabs and power shots. Hopkins occasionally landed a sneaky shot, but for the most part it was all Kovalev in winning a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 120-106, 120-107 and 120-107.

Ward is a straight copy of Hopkins in fighting style, but he clearly hasn’t aged as well as him. Hopkins was still fighting at a very high level when he was 32. Ward is definitely not the fighter that he was five years ago, and it doesn’t look like he’s ever going to be able to regain the form that he once had.
Sanchez said this to Fighthub.com about the Kovalev vs. Ward fight on November 19:

“I think Andre was given the opportunity to shine. I think he was given the right opponent to shine with. I think he was given all the opponents to look like a million dollars and he failed at it. It was not only evident with all that saw the fight. It was also evident to Virgil [Hunter] in the corner. He was trying to tell him in the last couple of rounds, leaning over his shoulder, telling him that he needed to get this guy out. That’s what he was trying to tell him. Andre was having none of it. He was given the opportunity to shine and he didn’t do that. I still pick Kovalev to either win a decision or stop him late. I think Kovalev is too much of a fighter for Andre. Andre is very skilled, but Kovalev is a full 175 pounder that can crack. This fight will be similar and reminiscent of Kovalev-Hopkins. He’ll beat him like that from the outside, and Andre is not going to have anything to hurt him or keep him from doing what he wants to do.”

With the way that Ward has looked in his comeback, he’s going to have a terrible time against Kovalev on November 19. Ward isn’t mobile like he used to, and he’s not able to throw a lot of punches. Ward has never had a high work rate, and he’s going to need that against Kovalev. Ward won the Super Six tournament in 2011 by using a lot of inside grappling to nullify the offense of fighters like Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler.

Ward was able to do that because he was the stronger fighter than those two. But against Kovalev, Ward is going to have to come up with a new strategy, because he won’t be stronger than him. If Ward chooses to try and wrestle Kovalev for 12 rounds, he could get hurt on the inside. It’s also unclear whether the referee will allow Ward to hold all night long and not fight.

Kovalev defeated Isaac Chilemba by a 12 round unanimous decision in his last fight in July of this year in winning by the scores: 116-111, 117-110, and 118-109. Chilemba was able to land an occasional pot shot, but for the most part, he lacked the punching power to make a real fight of it. The only thing that Chilemba could do was land pot shots when Kovalv was coming forward Chilemba didn’t even try and push the fight to Kovalev, because it was too dangerous for him to fight like that. If Ward fights the same way that Chilemba did, then it’s going to be a very easy fight for Kovalev.

In Kovalev’s fights previous to the Chilemba fight, he defeated Jean Pascal by a 7th round stoppage last January in their rematch. It was a needless rematch, as Kovalev had already stopped Pascal in the 8th round in March of 2015. The boxing fans got to see another mismatch with them fighting for a second time. Hopefully this is the last time the two of them face each other, because twice was more than enough. Kovalev also stopped Nadjib Mohammedi in the third round last year in July 2015. This was a mismatch too for Kovalev, and not a particularly interesting fight to watch.

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Ward defeated 39-year-old Alexander Brand by a boring 12 round unanimous decision last August at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. It was another tune-up fight for Ward to get sharpened up for the Kovalev fight. It’s unclear why Ward was matched against an old super middleweight fringe contender rather than a light heavyweight. Never the less, it wasn’t an impressive performance, as he did little more than jab and throw pot shots for 12 rounds.

Ward didn’t show any power, and his work rate was low like it had always been. In Ward’s two fights before that, he defeated Sullivan Barrera by a 12 round decision last March and Paul Smith by a 9th round knockout in June of 2015. Ward looked nothing like the fighter he’d been in 2011, when he edged Carl Froch in the Super Six tournament. That was Ward at his very beat, and he still barely beat Froch. now he’s fighting a bigger, stronger fighter than Froch in Sergey Kovalev, and it doesn’t bode well for Ward unless he can increase his work rate and find some punching power somewhere.