By Allan Fox: Andre Ward got past the small and old fighter Alexander Brand (25-2, 19 KOs) that his promoters at Roc Nation Sports lined up for him last Saturday night in his showcase fight on HBO Boxing.
Ward is now facing the real thing in IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev on November 19 in his next fight. Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter thinks that Kovalev will be wondering about whether Ward will be switching to southpaw during their fight on November 19.
Ward used the southpaw stance during the 6th round against Brand last Saturday and it didn’t work out too well for him. Brand belted Ward a few times with right hands when he was fighting southpaw. Ward gave up on the idea quickly and fought the rest of the fight out of the orthodox stance.
“I take Kovalev as being an intelligent fighter and he’s been in the game long enough. I think in that situation, he would probably ask himself logical questions,” said Hunter to Fighthype.com. “Would I have to deal with southpaw or not? What are the things that are coming to the table…You have to have more than power. You have to have more than skill. You have to have a lot of other ingredients that come to fruition in situations like that. Number one is being able to perform under those lights.”
Kovalev looked bored in watching the Ward vs. Brand fight live at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Kovalev didn’t come right out and say the fight was boring, but he did say he saw ‘nothing new’ from Ward that he hadn’t seen before from him. It was a safety first fight from start to finish from Ward, and he appeared unwilling or unable to pull the trigger on his punches in the fight.
Kovalev has to be thinking that he can outwork Ward by throwing 50 to 80 punches per round. At 32, Ward doesn’t look capable of throwing more than 30 punches per round tops and most of those punches are harmless jabs. Ward never had a high work rate in the prime of his career, but not that he’s restarted his career after a two-year layoff, he’s throwing even less punches and not moving around the ring like he used to when he was younger.
The boxing experts like Freddie Roach and Abel Sanchez both have noticed how much Ward has lost from his game. The less attentive hardcore and boxing fans mistakenly think Ward is the same fighter he once was, but he clearly isn’t the same guy. I think Ward is fighting at 50% of what he was before, and that’s me being generous.
I think Ward is going to taste defeat for the first time against Kovalev on November 10, and I believe it’ll be worse than the defeat Bernard Hopkins suffered in his loss to Kovalev in 2014. Some boxing fans say that Ward is a chip off the old block in being a carbon copy of Hopkins. Kovalev had an easy time figuring out and getting the better of Hopkins two years ago. I suspect it’ll be even easier for Kovalev to beat Ward.