By Chris Williams: Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) thinks it’s funny how former IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Seregey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) has turned into a whining, complaining, poor sport after his 12 round unanimous decision loss to him on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Ward, 32, sees it as interesting in how Kovalev went from a tough talking guy before the fight into a complaining one afterward when things didn’t go his way. Ward notes that he exposed Kovalev as not having an inside game, and that he responded by calling him a dirty fighter.
Ward said this via social media as quoted by Fighthype.com about his match against Kovalev.
“It’s amazing to me that the same guy who said he would kick me in the ring if he had to, the same guy who said he wanted a street fight, is the same guy calling me a dirty fighter & the same guy crying foul because things didn’t go his way,” said Ward. “The reality is when a guy likes to fight one way, on the outside, and is very uncomfortable fighting inside, they call you a dirty fighter,” said Ward.
It’s too bad Kovalev couldn’t just give Ward credit for having given him a boxing lesson. Kovalev’s loyal fans say that Ward was given a gift by the three judges who worked the fight, as they scored it for Ward by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113.
In reality, Kovalev was given a gift in losing the fight, because he learned that he’s not good enough to beat a fighter that fights on the inside. Instead of Kovalev accepting the gift that Ward has given him in showing him an area in his game that he needs to work on, Kovalev is rejecting the gift and not wanting to accept it.
When a fighter refuses to acknowledge that they were beaten fairly, they don’t learn from it, and they fail to improve. Kovalev would be wise to come to agree that he was beaten by Ward so that he can get back into the gym and try and learn how to fight on the inside so that Ward doesn’t beat him again in that fashion.
The bad news for Kovalev is that Ward is going to adapt his game by the time that they fight each other again in early 2017 in a rematch. So instead of Ward mostly fighting on the inside, he might fight a lot more on the outside by jabbing and pot shotting.
If Kovalev hasn’t trained to beat a fighter that jabs and pot shots from the outside, then he’ll lose the rematch too. Ward might also choose to use movement an fast charging attacks like he did in his fight against Mikkel Kessler in 2009. Kovalev didn’t see that part of Ward’s game on November 19th, because Ward din’t need to use it I imagine that was probably Plan-C if his first two plans didn’t work.
They did work and they worked well. When Ward wasn’t fighting on the inside, he was staying on the outside and jabbing Kovalev hard with head-snapping jabs that resembled power shots. If Kovalev wonders why he lost the fight, then he needs to notice how Ward was jabbing him from the outside so frequently. Those jabs were the best shots that landed in the second half of the fight.
Kovalev’s punches were slow and weak by the last six rounds of the contest. When they did land, they weren’t landing with the same authority as Ward’s shots were. That’s one of the reasons why the boxing fans at the T-Mobile Arena were cheering so much.
They weren’t cheering for Ward because they were his fans. They were cheering because he was landing so many jabs that were snapping the head back of Kovalev. When Kovalev would land a good shot in the second half, the boxing fans were cheering for him too. The thing is, Kovalev wasn’t landing frequently enough to keep up with what Ward was doing. The judges weren’t taking their cues from the fans. They saw what Ward was doing, and they scored it in an obvious way.
Considering how Kovalev was complaining about his loss to Ward, I doubt that he’s going to improve on the mistakes he made in the first fight. Kovalev won’t learn how to fight on the inside. I don’t know if it’s possible for any top fighter to learn how to fight on the inside overnight.
It takes years to learn how to fight on the inside, and some fighters never fully get comfortable in that area of boxing. It’s not good news if Kovalev can’t adapt that part of his game to try and compete with Ward on the inside. Ward has already it’s going to be easier for him in the rematch, because he knows what to do to beat Kovalev. This means that the fight is going to be fought on the inside, and Kovalev is going to be powerless to deal with it.
The rematch between Ward and Kovalev will be shown on HBO once again. The only thing that is unknown is whether it’ll on PPV or not. It’s likely that we’ll see the rematch on PPV, because of the large guaranteed purses the two fighters will be getting for the fight. To receive the big purses the two fighters received, they’ll need to put the rematch on HBO PPV.