By Allan Fox: The odds-makers have unbeaten Andre “SOG” Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) still as the slight favorite to beat IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) for their fight this Saturday night on HBO PPV. Ward isn’t enough of a favorite to be counted on to win the fight with any degree of certainty.
It’s pretty much a 50-50 fight. However, based on how the two fighters looked in their last fights, Ward is going to have a very tough time on Saturday night in handling Kovalev’s punching power, range and his high work rate. Kovalev throws more punches than Ward, and believe it or not, he moves better as well.
Ward used to be able to move well, but the size that he’s put on since moving up in weight has slowed him down. I don’t think Ward has fully adjusted to the extra weight.
According to Bovada, Ward is the favorite by the line-145 to +115 for Kovalev.
The odds-makers are frequently wrong, especially when it comes to slight favorites.
Ward, 32, says he sees Kovalev as a bully, and he plans on making him pay for everything he throws on Saturday night. Hopefully, Ward is ready for the shots that Kovalev hits him with in return, because he’s not going to just follow him around without throwing punches in this fight like we’ve seen from Ward’s last three opponents. Roc Nation Sports did Ward no favors by matching him against weaker opposition like Paul Smith and Alexander Brand. Those guys were not good enough fighters to prepare Ward for Kovalev.
Sullivan Barrera, who Ward beat earlier this year in March, was a decent option. He at least had the size and the power to give Ward problems. Smith and Brand were just super middleweights and not particularly good ones. They were not good enough fighters to prepare Ward to fight anyone in the 175lb division. They were the type that would be good if Ward were preparing to fight a fringe contender at super middleweight, but not a world champion at light heavyweight like Kovalev.
“It’s going deep. I’m not taking nothing. For every action, there’s going to be a reaction, times two,” Ward said. “They can talk tough, but he’s not going to do anything in the ring to jeopardize my safety or try to intimidate.”
Kovalev, 33, doesn’t try and intimidate when he’s inside the ring. He usually attacks his opponents, and doesn’t waste time with intimidation games. Once the fighters are inside the ring, it’s pointless to play intimidation games. Those kinds of things only work before you step inside the ring, and they only work with weaker-minded fighters. Kovalev hasn’t been trying to intimidate Ward.
You can argue that Ward is the one who is playing mind games by choosing not to shake Kovalev’s hand during the press conferences. In Thursday’s final press conference, Kovalev attempted to shake Ward’s hands but he didn’t accept it. Kovalev then bumped Ward’s fist, and walked away. You can interpret stuff like that as Ward attempting to play mind games by showing that he’s not going to be a good sport before the fight. What’s the purpose of not being a good sport? Some would say in order to intimidate and gain an edge against your opponents. So if there’s anyone playing intimidation games before the fight, I think it’s got to be Ward seen as doing that stuff.
The big question is will Ward be able to capitalize on his intimidation games? I don’t think it works at this level. Kovalev did not seem bothered in the least yesterday. It almost looked like he felt sorry for Ward, because he realized that the guy is so worked up to the point where he’s decided not to be a good sport.
“He’s a bully. His temperament, the things that he says, his attitude. You don’t have to do one polarizing thing. I listen to the things he says. My intention is to have a clean, fair fight,” said Ward about Kovalev.
I haven’t seen Kovalev showing signs of being a bully in the lead up to the Ward fight or any of his fights. Kovalev is usually friendly and polite with his opposition. When Kovalev fought Bernard Hopkins in 2014, you would think that Hopkins was going to destroy him before the fight. Hopkins was doing most of the talking, and he seemed to have a clear advantage over Kovalev. To hear Hopkins talk, I thought that Kovalev would be in trouble on fight night. Instead, it was Hopkins who was in big trouble from the 1st round, as he was dropped and totally dominated for 12 rounds in a one-sided manner. For the boxing fans who don’t know. Hopkins has a fighting style very similar to Ward’s. There’s not much difference between the two fighters. Ward is just younger than Hopkins, but the two fighters are very much alike. Considering how easily Kovalev beat Hopkins, it makes sense to assume that he’ll do the same thing with Ward on Saturday night.
The judging of this Saturday’s fight will be very important. The judges need to make sure that the right guy gets his hand raised. They can’t afford to give boxing a black-eye by picking the wrong guy as the winner. Kovalev is the visiting fighter technically, as Ward is the American and 2004 U.S Olympic gold medalist. Kovalev lives in the U.S in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. However, he’s still the visiting fighter in the minds of a lot of boxing fans.
Hopefully, we don’t see Ward winning a controversial decision in this fight, because it would look bad. The same goes for Kovalev. With him though, he usually wins by knockouts, so the judges don’t frequently get to play a part in his fights. When Kovalev’s fights do go to the scorecards, it’s usually in one-sided contests like in his wins over Isaac Chilemba and Hopkins. Those are the only two fights that went to the cards in the last six years for Kovalev. The rest of his fights have been knockout wins.
“I have never won big fights just doing one thing, being one-dimensional,” said Ward.
Ward will definitely try different things on Saturday night to get the win. If he can’t handle Kovalev’s power in fighting him one on one, then I expect Ward to try and use some other tactics to get the job done. This could involve moving, holding, wrestling, smothering, and possibly even roughing Kovalev up. We saw Ward use some of these things in his biggest win of his career against Carl Froch in 2011. Ward dominated the fight on the outside for the most boxing, but when Froch started to get to him with his big shots in the last few rounds, Ward took the fight to the inside and smothered him. Froch looked surprised by the tactics that Ward was using, but it wasn’t surprising news to those who were familiar with him. That’s how Ward fights at times. If he’s having problems with a fighter’s power, he’s going to look to smother him by taking it to the inside. Ward hasn’t done that in his three-fight comeback yet, but probably because his opposition has been so poor.