Kovalev’s trainer: Ward will need a Plan-B or Plan C

By Boxing News - 10/21/2016 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: Trainer John David Jackson thinks that Andre “SOG” Ward is going to need to have a Plan-B or Plan-C to fall back on next month when he faces IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jackson notes that the 32-year-old Ward likes to switch from the orthodox stance to southpaw often during his fights.

Jackson feels that Kovalev is going to nail Ward with a big shot while he’s in the southpaw stance that is going to make him forget about using that strategy for the remainder of the fight. Ward will then need to have some kind of backup plan to use against Kovalev for him to stay competitive, because the fight could get out of hand very quickly if Ward continues to try and fight southpaw.

Jackson said this about Ward to Fighthype.com in breaking down the fight:

“He [Ward] tends to make a couple of mistakes from that stance, but he uses it as a ploy sometimes. It works because it’s effective with other fighters. I don’t think it will be effective against Sergey...the first time he gets hit, all of that may go out of the window and if they have a plan B or plan C, they may have to go to that and do something different,” said Jackson.

Ward does have the ability to try different things with his fighting style. Ward likes to stand back against the ropes and throw pot shots. That’s the Ward that we’ve been seeing since he made his comeback last year in 2015 after two years out of ring. Ward doesn’t move as much, and he tends to keep his back against the ropes much of the time. That’s usually the sign of age or stamina issues when a fighter needs to fight with his back against the ropes. We see that a lot with middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez with him frequently resting with his back against the ropes in his fights.

Ward also likes to hold and wrestle. You can beat that the grappling will be one of Ward’s main plans for this fight. I don’t expect Ward to start off clinching and wrestling with his Plan-A. It’s more likely we’ll see Ward switch into the grappling mode in Plan-C, because it’s such an ugly thing to watch. It’s not good for a fighter to be seen as a wrestler, because the boxing fans don’t like to watch wrestling from their fighters. They want to see punches being thrown, and they don’ want to see punches thrown in between wrestling moves.

“That Sergey has will make Andre say, ‘You know what, let me go back right-handed and see if I can take him to school from the right-handed stance,’” said Jackson.

Of course, Ward is going to switch back from his southpaw stance to right-handed orthodox stance if Kovalev starts clocking him with right hands to the head. Ward won’t have any choice. He’ll have to try and go back to his righty stance and hope that he can use his hand speed and sharp timing advantage to get the better of the 33-year-old Kovalev.

The problem for Ward lies in that he might not be able to avoid all the right hands and left hooks that Kovalev will be throwing. Jackson has had a lot of time to dissect Ward’s last three fights of his comeback, and he obviously knows where Kovalev can take advantage of Ward. It doesn’t take an expert to see where Ward is vulnerable.

If you look at Ward’s last two fights against Alexander Brand and Sullivan Barrera, he looked vulnerable when those fighters were throwing sustained combinations. Barrera was especially difficult for Ward to deal with, because he had the size and power advantage over him. The only reason why Ward beat Barrera was because he wasn’t throwing enough shots. He would throw two or three shots while coming forward, and then give up while in close.

Barrera didn’t keep throwing shots while he was in range. This allowed Ward to get one single punch in that would catch the eyes of the judges, and that enabled him to win the rounds. Had Barrera kept throwing shots one after another, he would have forced Ward to either hold or get in a dog fight with him.

Ward hasn’t shown the ability to throw more punches than his opponents since making his comeback. He mainly has gotten away with using his head movement to make his opponents miss, and then the two fighters would wind up in a clinch after the missed punches. It was like this every time in Ward’s last two fights.

Ward has fought only one light heavyweight since moving up to the weight class last year. Ward has fought two super middleweights in Paul Smith and Alexander Brand. Sullivan Barrera is the only light heavyweight Ward has faced. Barrera was too flawed to use his natural size and power advantage over Ward. If Barrera had better training, he might have been able to get the better of Ward, but he was fighting the wrong fight in that match.

Kovalev will be Ward’s first true test against a good light heavyweight, and I’s going to be very difficult for Ward to try and deal with the size, power and the intelligence of Kovalev. He knows what he sees in Ward. Kovalev understands that Ward CANNOT match his work rate. He also knows that Ward cannot match his punching power.

Kovalev sees Ward as having only one way of beating him, and that’s to possibly win a 12 round decision. In Kovalev’s case, he feels that he has two potential ways of beating Ward by either knocking him out or beating him by a decision. Kovalev will be looking for the knockout first.

If Ward chooses to go in the survival mode to just survive for 12 rounds, then Kovalev will be content to beat him in the same way he defeated Bernard Hopkins in 2014. Some boxing fans say that Ward is a carbon copy of Hopkins style-wise and in terms of power. If that’s the case, then Ward is going to be in for a long night on November 19 against Kovalev.