Gvozdyk: Ward not my P4P king, Lomachenko is

By Boxing News - 03/28/2017 - Comments

Image: Gvozdyk: Ward not my P4P king, Lomachenko is

By Allan Fox: Undefeated light heavyweight contender Oleksandr Gvozdyk says he doesn’t rate IBF/WBA/WBO 175 lb. champion Andre “SOG” Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) as the pound-for-pound king in the sport of boxing now. Gvozdyk says his pick of the No.1 pound-for-pound king is WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko. Gvozdyk says he has doubts about Ward’s recent victory over Sergey Kovalev last November. Gvozdyk thought Kovalev did more than enough to deserve the victory over Ward. Kovalev knocked Ward down in the fight, and landed the harder shots. The three judges gave Ward the decision by the scores 114-113 x 3.

Despite the fact that Ward’s last win was controversial over Kovalev, Ring Magazine still chose to make Ward their No.1 pound-for-pound king. It was an odd decision for them to make Ward the new pound for pound king. When you have a fighter being selected as the pound-for-pound king off of a controversial win like the one Ward had against Kovalev, it’s hard to view him as a real solid choice. It makes you wonder about the decision making ability of those who made the choice.

“No, my pound for pound king is the champion Lomachenko. I like him more,” said Gvozdyk to Michele Phelps when asked if Andre Ward is his No.1 pound for pound fighter. “I have some doubts about his victory over [Sergey] Kovalev. He’s a very good fighter with good skills, but in that fight, I think he [Kovalev] was better. I would like to fight him [Ward],” said Gvozdyk.

Gvozdyk saw middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s 12 round unanimous decision win over Daniel Jacobs, and he believes it was a good decision. He doesn’t believe that Jacobs was dominating enough to rate the victory. Golovkin knocked Jacobs down in round 4, and built up a lead in the first half of the fight. Golovkin then coasted in the second half with his lead to get the win over Jacobs. Gvozdyk wonders whether Golovkin had a bad training camp, because he didn’t look like the same fighter. Gvozdyk notes also didn’t look good in his fight on the same card, and he shared the training camp with Golovkin.

“For me, the decision was fair because Triple G was the champion,” said Gvozdyk. “I think for Jacobs to grab his titles, he had to show more supremacy. In the first half, it was for Golovkin, but in the second half, Jacobs did a very good job but not enough to take his titles. Maybe it was an even fight, but not enough to give the fight to Jacobs. The fact is Triple G wasn’t looking like he always does like a killer. Everybody gets used to like he’s killing his opponents. Now it was like competitive fight. Now he makes other fighters confident to fight him right now. Before, nobody wanted to fight him. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was a mistake in preparation. I saw that Triple G and [Roman] Chocolatito [Gonzalez] were in the same camp, and Chocolatito was not in great shape for his fight. Maybe they did a mistake in the camp. Maybe Triple G is getting older. I think the decision was fair, but not the best fight for Triple G,”

Gvozdyk (11-0, 10 KOs) will be fighting on April 8 against Yunieski Gonzalez (18-2, 14 KOs) in a 10 round fight at the MGM National Harbor, in Oxon Hill, Maryland.