By Allan Fox: IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) says he wants to knockout challenger Andre “SOG” Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) in their fight in two months on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view. Kovalev wants to give his boxing fans “a big present” by stopping the 32-year-old Ward, and in front of them, and he says he would be very happy if he can KO him in the 1st round of the fight.
Kovalev says if he catches Ward with a left or a right hand, he could get him of there early. Above all, Kovalev, 33, says he wants to score a knockout, because his goal is not to have the fight go 12 rounds.
Kovalev notes that Ward is very good at fighting on the inside. Kovalev isn’t saying whether he believes that Ward will try that tactic with him, but it seems likely that he feels that he’ll be trying that tactic on him. In Ward’s three fights of his comeback against Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera and Alexander Brand, he’s stayed on the outside for the most part and landed pot shots.
Occasionally, Ward went to the inside to wrestle and land short punches, but it wasn’t like earlier in his career when he was in the Super Six tournament. Ward spent entire fights on the inside against guys like Carl Froch, Allan Green and Arthur Abraham. It could be that Ward doesn’t feel like he has the size or strength to wrestle large light heavyweights for 12 rounds, because it takes a lot of energy to do that, and he no longer has the size advantage over his opponents. Thus far, Ward has only fought one light heavyweight in his comeback in his match against Barrera earlier this year in March. Ward’s other two fights came against blown up older super middleweights in Alexander Brand and Paul Smith.
The Kovalev-Ward fight will be taking place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
“It’s not a goal to go 12 rounds. I want to prove I’m the ‘Krusher’ and knock him out” said Kovalev about Ward to Michele Phelps. “If I get him in the 1st round with the right or the left, it could be stopped in the 1st round. It would be a big present for the boxing fans. His style is very tricky. He’s a smart boxer. He’s not fighting. He’s boxing. He’s not into the dangerous. He’s very good at working at close distance; close fight on the inside. He should be ready, but I’ll be ready too. I’m interested in what will happen,” said Kovalev.
Ward will be looking to make Kovalev miss with his power shots by using a lot of head movement. If Ward can succeed in having Kovalev decrease the punching power on his shots, then he’ll be able to turn the fight into a pure boxing match that will give him a chance of winning the fight. The areas where Kovalev will have a huge advantage over Ward is in his work rate and punching power.
Even if Kovalev does take the power off of his shots to land with better accuracy, he can still wind up winning the fight by throwing a lot of punches. A high volume punch output from Kovalev is going to give Ward problems, because he’s a pure pot shot fighter in the Floyd Mayweather Jr. mold. Ward will be able to land clean shots in each round to try and gain the attention of the judges. However, if Kovalev is consistently out-landing Ward by a significant amount, it’s going to be hard for Ward to win the fight without him choosing to go to a different strategy such as moving a lot or taking the fight to the inside to wrestle with Kovalev.
There are no guarantees that Ward is going to be able to get the better of a hard puncher like Kovalev on the inside. Ward took a lot of punishment in his fight against Sakio Bika on the inside in November 2010. Ward finally had to abandon his inside game entirely after the fourth round to fight on the outside to out-box Bika, but it was still a very hard fight for him. The judges didn’t give Bika much credit for how he was working Ward over in close, as they scored the fight 120-108, 118-110 and 118-111.
I thought the scoring of the fight should have been a lot closer than that. The fight showed that Ward is not always the better fighter on the inside. If his opponents are able to punch with a lot of power in close, as Bika was able to, then Ward isn’t going to do well trying that tactic. It’s unclear how good of an inside fighter Kovalev is. We haven’t seen him fight on the inside too often during his career, because he’s always been able to stay on the outside and jab and slug.
