By All Fox: Andre Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) doesn’t have the size, willingness to fight, or the talent to beat IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs), according to the “Krusher” Kovalev’s former trainer Abel Sanchez, who currently trains unbeaten middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin.
Sanchez says that Ward is too focused on being technical in his fights, and not willing to mix it up the way he’d need to be able to for him to beat the more powerful Kovalev. The two fighters are going to be facing each other soon on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens in the fight if Ward is going to spend the entire fight just trying not to get hit instead of delivering blows.
Sanchez said this fight Fighthype.com about his thoughts on the Kovalev vs. Ward fight:
“Kovalev, I just think Kovalev is a better fighter; not a boxer or a technical fighter. I’m talking about he wants to fight; whereas Andre Ward wants to be cute, be technical. Kovalev will be too big for him. I made Kovalev. Kovalev was me for eight fights and eight knockouts. That style he’s got is my style. John [David Jackson] has done some good work with him, but that style came from my gym,” said Sanchez.
It’s going to be sad news if Ward loses to Kovalev. it won’t be the end of Ward’s boxing career, but he’ll need to downsize his ambitions a little. Ward could still look to fight WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson for his title, but I think Ward won’t have the power or the speed to handle Stevenson. That’s a bad match-up for Ward.
While some boxing fans might be quick to assume that the only reason why Sanchez is picking Kovalev to win this fight is because he used to train him years ago. I don’t think that’s the case. Sanchez just appears to see Kovalev as the better fighter of the two, and that’s why he’s picking him to win.
Sanchez said he feels that Ward has not had the adequate preparation for this fight that he feels he needs for him to have a good chance of winning. Sanchez notes that Ward was out of the ring for two years, and then he came back and fought two mediocre super middleweights in Paul Smith and 39-year-old Alexander Brand.
Ward had the fight against Sullivan Barrera, which was a good one, but that was just one fight. Ward didn’t look good against Barrera. Sanchez thinks Ward should have taken more fights to get ready for the Kovalev fight, and that he should have fought better opponents than the ones he faced.
Sanchez could be right about Kovalev being too big for Ward, and the better fighter due to him being willing to trade power shots. If you look at Ward’s hardest fight of his three-fight comeback against Sullivan Barrera last March, Ward spent the majority of the fight trying to keep from getting nailed by Barrera. When Ward did throw shots back, he had no punching power whatsoever.
You could see the difference in the power of the two fighters right off the bat, as Barrera was the much stronger fighter of the two, and he wasn’t bothered at all by Ward’s power shots. The only reason Barrera lost the fight was because he didn’t throw enough shots. He allowed Ward to match hi with his work rate, and the judges were more impressed with the pot shots that Ward was landing rather than on the bigger shots that were being thrown by Barrera.
The way for Kovalev to win this fight is by him doubling the work-rate of Ward’s. Kovalev will need to throw more punches, because Ward is going to make him miss a certain amount of times, and he’ll also be blocking a lot of shots. Kovalev isn’t going to win the fight if he merely lands the same amount of shots as Ward, because the judges will likely be more impressed with Ward due to his defensive skills.
Kovalev may not be bigger fighter inside the ring, as they’re both 6’0”, and Ward looks big after he rehydrates for his fights. Where Kovalev will have an advantage over Ward is in the reach department. His reach is one and a half inches longer than Ward.
That could play a factor in this fight when Kovalev is on the outside using his jab. Ward beat a bigger fighter than Kovalev in 6’2” Sullivan Barrera earlier this year, but the Cuban fighter didn’t use his jab much at all in that fight. Barrera was just throwing bombs, and not seeing anything up with his jab. After a while, Barrera couldn’t even load up on his shots anymore, because Ward was missing him miss so much.
Barrera then had to take the power off his punches just so that he could increase his chances of landing his punches. Kovalev isn’t going to load up with everything. He’s going to use his jab and look to make contact with Ward’s head. If Ward blocks the head shots, then you can bet that Kovalev will jab downstairs to the body, and then hook Ward to the head when he drops his guard to block the body shots.
It’s going to be difficult for Ward to be able to keep up with Kovalev in this fight if he chooses to go to war. Ward doesn’t have the power, work rate or the youth to be able to fight in that way against a warrior like Kovalev. Ward doesn’t have the legs to move around the ring like he used to, and that’s going to be a problem as well for him, because he was good at moving earlier in his career.
In look at Ward in his best fight of his three-fight comeback against Barrera, I think he’ll lose to Kovalev if he doesn’t improve over that performance. That performance by Ward was no better than Isaac Chilemba in his fight against Kovalev. Ward fought like a slower, less mobile and less active Chilemba. If Chilemba had fought in a stationary manner against Kovalev in the same way that Ward has been fighting since making his comeback, I think it would have been a very easy fight for Kovalev to destroy Chilemba in their fight last July.