By Allan Fox: Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev says he’s in a corner with no other option but to finish off Andre Ward’s boxing career on Saturday night in their fight on HBO PPV in Las Vegas, Nevada. Kovalev seems intent on giving Ward such a bad beating that he won’t be able to continue his career after their fight at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.
It’s unclear if the 34-year-old Kovalev is serious about wanting to end the career of the 33-year-old Ward or if he’s just saying this in order to pump up the PPV numbers on HBO. It’s going to be very difficult for Kovalev to inflict a lot of punishment on Ward if the fight is going to take place at close quarters. Listening to the recent sound-bites from the American Ward, it seems very clear that he’s going to take the fight to the inside against Kovalev and keep it there for the entire 12 round fight.
While some fighters are dangerous on the inside, Kovalev isn’t one of them. He’s got long, thin arms, and he’s not able to generate a lot of power in close. In Ward’s part, he’s built more like a wrestler, and he seems to fight a lot like a wrestler would with the way he lowers his head and sticks it into the chest of his opponent. If Kovalev knew how to throw an uppercut, he would have Ward at his mercy, but he doesn’t seem to know how to throw those type of punches.
“I will finish his boxing career, be sure, because right now I’m in the corner,” said Kovalev to the boxing media about his fight with Ward. “I don’t have another way accept to get a victory over him. They will never go to my country, because Andre Ward is a hometown champion. He will never fight outside of the USA, never. I’m the pro. World champion should fight everywhere. Okay, I fought in your country in La Vegas. Why don’t you want to fight in New York? They want to fight in Las Vegas again, because they have a big support over there,” said Kovalev.
Kovalev won’t finish Ward’s career, but he may bruise him up if the fight goes the full 12 rounds. Neither fighter is going to be ending careers on Saturday night. All we as boxing fans can hope for is the second Ward-Kovalev fight doesn’t turn into another snooze-fest like the first one was last November. That was very boring to watch. Some boxing fans loved the wrestling that took place in that fight, but I’d say the majority were less than impressed at seeing all the holding for 12 rounds.
Some boxing fans compared the Ward vs. Kovalev fight to an MMA match. I disagree. That’s a put down to MMA. Ward-Kovalev was more like amateur wrestling in which both guys are standing up, holding nonstop and afraid to go for a take down. You get that kind of stuff in amateur wrestling, especially with the heavyweights. You get a lot of matches that end up with a 1-0 score due to the limited action.
Hopefully this Saturday’s Kovalev and Ward fight will aspire to be a better fight than what we previously saw. Ward was a different fighter in his 3 previous fights against Alexander Brand, Sullivan Barrera and Paul Smith. Ward didn’t wrestle in those fights. He did a fair job of actually fighting and boxing. It wasn’t anything like we saw against Kovalev. It wasn’t thrilling to watch, but it was a lot better than the performance we saw from him against Kovalev. In Ward’s fights against Carlo Froch, Edwin Rodriguez, Sakio Bika and Allan Green, those were fights that saw him do a lot of mauling. Ward would force his opponents against the ropes by pushing them to the ropes. He would then keep them trapped there by grappling. Bika was the exception though, as he was able to rough Ward up on the inside to prevent him from fighting in close for the full 12 rounds. Ward gave up on fighting Bika in close by the 6th, because he was taking so much punishment from him.
There isn’t a rematch clause for Saturday’s fight between Ward and Kovalev. Suffice to say if Ward wins the match, there won’t be any point in the two fighting each other a third time. You’re not going to get the boxing public to purchase a third fight between Ward-Kovalev if Ward wins the 2nd fight. Even if it’s another controversial decision with Ward winning like he did last time, it’s extremely doubtful there would be a third fight. It would be bad news have a third fight with the stink of 2 controversial wins back to back for Ward. Boxing fans won’t likely want to purchase a third fight between them if they have no confidence in the judging.
”I can’t go into a fight thinking about it’s entertainment value,” said Ward. ”I just need to do me, execute the game plan and get my hand raised at the end of the fight. I always want to put on a great show for the fans. Last fight, we definitely put on a show,” said Ward.
I think a lot of boxing fans would disagree with Ward about the previous fight between him and Kovalev being a good show. Of course, it depends on what you like in a fight. If you like to see brawling or boxing, then you probably weren’t happy with what you saw last November. Kovalev-Ward had very little of those things in the first fight. If you like to see a lot of grappling, pushing and pulling and long stalemates involving holding at center ring, then you were probably as happy as a lark. For me, I thought I was very boring to watch. I kept thinking, ‘When is that referee going to start breaking the two fighters apart so that we can see some actual fighting. Why is the referee even there? He’s just standing and doing nothing. The guy needs to be useful and do his job.’ It’s definitely not a good sign that Ward is coming out in the open and saying he can’t worry about trying to entertain the fans. That suggests that he’s going to try and turn the fight into a tactical one where he might resort to prolonged holding again.
“No there is not,” said Kovalev’s promoter Kathy Duva about there not being a rematch clause for the Ward-Kovalev II fight.
It might be best for Ward and Kovalev to move on no matter who wins fight No.2. Artur Beterbiev is facing Enrico Koelling in an IBF title eliminator. If Beterbiev wins that fight, which is very likely, he’ll be the IBF mandatory challenger. The winner of the Ward-Kovalev 2 fight would need to defend against Beterbiev in a certain amount of time. it might be a good idea to see Ward or Kovalev face Beterbiev before meeting for a third time. At least the boxing world would get a chance a chance to see Ward or Kovalev do against another fighter with talent. Kovalev hasn’t faced a lot of talented opposition during his career. Ward has arguably faced only 3 good fighters during his own career in his fights against Kovalev, Carl Froch and Mikkel Kessler. Beterbiev would be a good test for Ward or Kovalev. It would be some new blood.
