By Jeff Aranow: Sergey Kovalev says he gave too much respect to Andre Ward’s talent before he fought him last November in their fight on HBO PPV. When Kovalev got inside the ring with Ward, he was surprised at how easy it was in jumping out to a quick lead in the first 4 rounds. But after the 4th, Kovalev says he lost his energy due to him having over-trained for the fight.
From the 5th round on, Kovalev didn’t have power on his shots, he says. Kovalev still thinks he did more than enough to win the fight against Ward. He’s just not happy that he did too much in training camp, because he feels he would have been much stronger if he had backed off from his training.
Kovalev will get a second shot against Ward in a rematch on May 6 on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kovalev says he’s going to prove all the people wrong that picked against him.
“I want to prove to people who believed in his victory that they are wrong,” said Kovalev. “I like to disappoint people who don’t believe in me. I turn them to my side after each fight. I overrated the guy before the fight. When I get in the ring, I was surprised. Why I did a lot of workouts for the fight. I could have had more fun in my training camp. Belts are like a magnet, but they’re not his belts. He’s not a real champion in my eyes,” said Kovalev.
Kovalev needs to get some good sparring partners to put him through an accelerated training camp to give him a working knowledge of the basics of fighting on the inside, because there is a better than average chance that Ward is thinking of making it an inside war. It won’t be a war if Kovalev still doesn’t know how to operate on the inside. It’ll be too easy for Ward because he’ll land a lot of body shots and force Kovalev to expend energy on the inside with his tactics.
If Kovalev can work on his inside game most of the time during camp, he might be able to handle Ward’s fighting in close. It still won’t be easy for Kovalev because Ward also does a lot of grappling to tire out his opponents. He’s not just throwing punches when he’s on the inside. If Ward were doing that, it would be easier for Kovalev to deal with what he’s doing because he would give hi enough space to get his own shots off.
Training less might not work out well for Kovalev. Ward says he’s going to be pushing a fast pace in the rematch. If Kovalev isn’t in tip top shape and ready to fight a hard 12 rounds, he could tire out even worse than he did last time and wind up getting beaten again. Another loss by Kovalev will finish his rivalry with Ward.
The boxing public will not buy a third fight if Kovalev loses the second fight, because it will affirm in their minds that Ward is the better fighter of the two. Ward can then move on and fight whoever he wants without having to listen to the boxing fans say he didn’t deserve the win. A win for Kovalev would make him feel justified in his mind that he was always better than Ward, and that he’d been robbed in the first fight.
Right now, a lot of boxing fans are expecting Ward to do the same thing he did the last time by stifling the power of Kovalev by staying right up against him in close. It’s an extinguishing style that Ward sometimes uses when he’s facing power punchers or fighters with good offensive skills. It’s worked for Ward each time he’s used this style of inside fighting. Kovalev may grow tired faster in the rematch than he did in the first fight unless he can come up with a different game plan that will counteract what Ward is doing.
“He’s like a fish. To me, he’s like a fish,” said Kovalev to secondsout.com in talking about what he sees in Ward’s face when he looks at him. It’s like he lost. “He’s now trying to push everybody to believe in him. He lost my respect. I can even be drunk and get a victory over Andre Ward. No, it’s not true,” said Kovalev when asked if he drinks. “I can’t drink. I care about my health,” said Kovalev.
Ward needs to be able to tell the boxing fans that he deserved the victory the first time he fought Kovalev, because if the fans hear him say he lost the fight, it would create less interest in the rematch. Ward is smart by trying to convince the fans that he deserved the victory. The more Ward talks the angrier his critics will be and the more they’ll want to see a second fight.
Kovalev and Ward need each other for them to fight on HBO PPV. Neither of them are popular enough on their own to fight in a pay-per-view fight against anyone else in the 175lb division at this time. Adonis Stevenson lacks the popularity for Ward and Kovalev to fight him on PPV. The best thing that can come out of the second Ward-Kovalev fight is a draw or another controversial decision like the last one. If the two want to keep getting big paydays, then they need to keep their rivalry going for as long as possible.
“I think people bought pay-per-view because I was doing it, because he’s boring,” said Kovalev. “He didn’t fight with anybody except for me on HBO pay-per-view because nobody will pay for his fights. I’m very happy that people have their own opinion. Their opinion for me means a lot. If it is I lost the fight, then I agree because it’s the opinion of the people. But people said he lost and I won. I was robbed and I agree too because I didn’t want to say I’m the best. People will say I’m the best. It’s important to me the opinion of boxing fans, but he didn’t agree with the boxing fans. It’s like he’s putting on his head a crown. ‘I’m the best,’ but nobody put him No.1 pound-for-pound,” said Kovalev.
“I lost my power in the second half of the fight. I over-trained,” said Kovalev about his previous fight against Ward. “I’ll be training less than I did, then I’ll be hungry and then I’ll box him much better. I was not hungry last time. I know what happened to me in the 5th round. I lost my power, my energy, and my speed. I did not feel him in the first 4 rounds. In the 5th round, I’m finished. It was my mistake in training camp,” said Kovalev.
Kovalev hasn’t looked good physically in his last 2 fights against Ward and Isaac Chilemba. If it is a training issue that caused him to have problems in the Ward fight, then he’s been dealing with the same problem since the Chilemba fight. Kovalev should have caught the problem before it ever got to the point where he fought Ward. Kovalev is 34 now, and his trainer John David Jackson should have been backing him off in training to account for his advancing age. Doing more isn’t always better when a fighter is getting to their mid-30s like Kovalev.
“He knows he lost the fight. He knows and everybody knows most people,” said Kovalev about Ward. “His fans and his family believe in his victory. Right now, he’s pushing everybody to believe in his victory. Come on, it’s not like that,” said Kovalev.
Ward might suspect that he lost the fight. It’s got to bug him more than a little that so many boxing fans think he shouldn’t have had his hand raised last time. It’s good that Kovalev had a rematch clause in the contract to force a rematch because it might not have happened. Ward has sounded ambivalent about continuing his career.
The rematch clause combined with the way their previous fight ended in controversy resulted in Ward going ahead with the rematch. It would be good if Ward keeps fighting beyond the second fight because he’s got enough left in the tank to give some of the other fighters in the division problems. I don’t know if War could beat Stevenson or Artur Beterbiev, but he’d be a problem for guys like Oleksandr Gvozdyk, Joe Smith Jr. and Andrzej Fonfra.