By Matthias Predonzan: Unfortunately, I was right twice about last Saturday night’s Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward fight on HBO pay-per-view at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. When I predicted Andre Ward victory in a competitive fight but also forecasting a chorus of voices trying to diminish the value of Andre success. The argumentation that follows will try to explain to boxing fans what the sport of boxing is about.
It is a noble art where the rules are to price the contender that is able to hit more, without to be hit back that much. To impose his technique and ring generalship, as well as imposing effective aggressiveness.
The great trainer Nacho Beristain, when asked to predict this fight, put it very candidly in more poetic words: the best technician, at the end will prevail.
So now we have a lot of people saying that Sergey Kovalev won the fight, I guess because he knocked-down Ward in the second round.
But the rules of the sport are not working in this way.
Every round counts and if a fighter wins fewer rounds, he loses the game. Period.
After the knock-down, Ward took two rounds to regroup and than he was able to control the fight and to win it.
He made it with his precious weapon: his ring IQ.
He won because:
A- Even if he was clearly surprised from Kovalev jab, speed and power he was able to adjust to these qualities of his opponent.
B- Even if Kovalev was clinching him for the whole fight, in order to prevent him to use his prevailing inside fighting capacity, he was able to land enough body shots that removed, round by round, Kovalev power and speed.
C- He was able to establish an incredible jab that prevented Kovalev to use his jab and overhand right for the rest of the fight.
It was a great fight, with two really good boxers that, even if belonging to two different classes ( in term of ability)- because of the fact that Ward was not at his best – were quite evenly matched.
I liked a lot Kovalev’s boxing ability. I liked his speed and his movement.
I didn’t like Kovalev’s incapacity to do something different from what he does very well ( that is enough to beat anybody else but not a world class fighter like Ward).
Kovalev showed that he is a single-dimensional fighter.
Kovalev is a poor inside fighter and he doesn’t punch to the body.
On Ward side, I didn’t like how he was staying in the pocket after delivering any combination.
I loved how Ward was able to react to a very difficult moment and turn the tables to win the fight.
I’ll love to see a rematch between the two fighters, even if I think Kovalev lost his chance, tonight, to beat Andre Word and the next fight will be more on the dominating mode by Andre Ward.