By Jeff Aranow: Former light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev says he’s already training for his next fight against Andre “SOG” Ward for June or July on HBO. That’s when Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) plans on fighting again. Kovalev says he wants to face Ward in the rematch badly, and knock him out this time. Kovalev isn’t happy. He says that he had an agreement and contract in place for the rematch from the first fight.
Kovalev, 33, says that Ward now wants a new contract for the fight with Kovalev with his terms. Kovalev says open to seeing what those terms are. However, if Kovalev doesn’t agree to those terms, then he says they’ll go with the first contract. Kovalev didn’t say what he and his promoters at Main Events will do if Ward chooses not to fight him under the terms for the first contract. That’s the big question.
Kovalev lost a narrow 12 round unanimous decision to Ward on November 19 last year in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kovalev and many of the boxing fans of the sport felt that he did enough to deserve the victory. The three judges that worked the fight felt differently, as all three of them gave Ward the decision by the identical scores of 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyhd5L96uek
“I already started [training],” said Kovalev to Fighhub.com. “Little by little I’m training every day to get in shape. HBO gave the date already. Right now, we think the fight will be in June or July,” said Kovalev about his next fight.
When asked if he’s going to be facing Andre Ward next, Kovalev said, “I want to beat him very bad, and stop him. I don’ want to speak about piece of [expletive]. He’s another piece of [expletive] in my eyes, because he’s not a real man. We already have an agreement and contract for the rematch. But he already started him and his team, ‘Not right now; we’re champions. If you want to fight, you should fight under our new contract; our new terms.’ Okay, let me know what are your terms. If not agree with this, we’re going to fight on the first contract. I’m ready,” said Kovalev.
Hopefully for the sake of the boxing fans, Kovalev and Ward don’t end up litigating the contract for the fight. That would be a pity if takes a long time for the rematch to take place, because it wouldn’t work for either fighter to be out of the ring for an extended period of time. Ward has missed a lot of time already with his boxing career. If he’s going to sit on the shelf for another long period, it won’t be good for his skills.
Ward didn’t look very sharp at all against Kovalev. Ward was knocked down in round 2. After that, he mostly just wrestled Kovalev for the next 10 rounds. If that’s all that’s left of Ward’s skills is his wrestling ability, then he’s not going to go far with that. What happens when Ward has to fight someone that is a good at fighting on the inside like Artur Beterbiev? That would be hard for Ward to beat him using a grappling approach to the fight. If a good referee is assigned to a fight between Ward and Kovalev or Ward-Beterbiev that controls the inside grappling, we could see that eliminated.
Ward is only 33, but he doesn’t fight like a young 33. Ward doesn’t look like the fighter that he once was 6 years ago. It would be bad if all Ward has left is his ability to grapple with his opponents.
