By Chris Williams: Andre Ward (30-15 KOs) is on the verge of taking the #1 pound for pound spot this Saturday night with a win over IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) in their long awaited match-up on HBO pay-per-view. It’s already setup for the winner of the Kovalev-Ward fight to take the pound for pound top spot from the current #1 guy Roman Gonzalez.
All Ward needs is to take Kovalev’s scalp to add it to his collection for him to be the No.1 guy. A lot of boxing fans feel that Ward should have already been the No.1 pound for pound guy in the past, but he couldn’t rise beyond No.2, because Floyd Mayweather Jr. was always around during Ward’s best years from 2009 to 2011.
(Photo credit: Tom Hogan – Hoganphotos/Roc Nation Sports)
Ward will beat Kovalev by doing these things on Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada:
1. Jabbing from long range
2. Using head movement
3. Tying him up each time he gets close
4. Movement
Mayweather is no longer around now with him having retired from the sport in 2015. Now the only guys keeping Ward from grabbing the No.1 spot are Roman Gonzalez and Kovalev. Ward can snatch the No. spot as long as he does the job on Kovalev.
“There were times in my career where I thought I could have had that top spot. I’ve been as high as No. 2 and I can’t argue with Floyd being No. 1,” said Ward via RingTV.com. “You got to accept that. This win will take care of itself.”
Yes, the win will take care of everything for Ward. He just needs to make sure there are no slipups in this fight by him getting hit with something stupid. Kovalev will be swinging for the fences at least initially in the 1st round. Once Kovalev realizes that he’s unable to land his power shots when he’s loading up, he’s going to start decreasing the power on his punches in an effort to land. Once Kovalev decreases the power on his shots, he’s going to be getting hit with Ward’s faster punches, and he’s going to get beaten in every round. Ward is the better boxer by far. Kovalev’s only chance of winning the fight is if he can KO Ward. That chance goes out the window once Kovalev takes the steam off of his shots.
“I’m after greatness,” Ward said. “I’ve accomplished a great deal throughout my career. But I’ve been watching guys like Leonard, Hagler, Duran and Hearns. Those guys chased greatness. Boxing is about settling who is the best in front of the whole world.”
The problem Ward had in the past was he couldn’t get the top fighters in the 168lb division to fight him after he captured the Super Six tournament in 2011. During that two-year tournament held by Showtime Boxing, the top fighters, with the exception of Lucian Bute, had to fight each other instead of dodging each other like they often do.
Ward was able to fight guys like Mikkel Kessler, Carl Froch and Arthur Abraham. Ward likely would have never been able to fight any of those guys if not for the Super Six tournament, because those guys were matched carefully during their careers for the most part. Once Ward won the tournament, he couldn’t get rematches with Froch, Abraham or Kessler. Ward couldn’t get any of the big fights.
After being out of the ring for two years with promotional issues, Ward moved up to light heavyweight in search for bigger fights. Even in this division, Ward might find himself blocked from fighting all the top guys once he takes Kovalev’s scalp. There aren’t too many names for Ward to fight once he gets Kovalev out of the way besides Adonis Stevenson, Nathan Cleverly and Juergen Braehmer.
The other top light heavyweight contenders – Artur Beterbiev, Eleider Alvarez, Joe Smith Jr. and Oleksander Gvozdyk – haven’t yet established themselves as names in the division yet. That won’t keep Ward from still fighting them though. If Ward can take Kovalev’s titles on Saturday night, he’ll have three of the four titles in his possession. This means that he’ll have a lot of interesting fights available to him just because of him holding most of the world titles in the division.
In an ideal world, Ward will face WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson to take the last remaining belt not in his possession. That fight may or may not take place. We’ll have to find out in the future. But it’ll be great news for Ward to beat Kovalev on Saturday night to put him as the top dog in the 175lb division. If the Stevenson fight can get made, then that would give Ward the opportunity to take the last strap. If Ward’s management can’t make that fight, it won’t matter, because he’ll still be recognized by the fans as being the No.1 guy at 175 by virtue of him holding most of the belts.
Kovalev, 33, only has one option of winning on Saturday night and that’s by knocking Ward out. If Kovalev is smart, he’ll be shooting for a knockout the moment the fight starts, because if he waits too long, he’s going to be too mentally discouraged that he won’t have any chance of getting the knockout. It’s going to be tough enough for Kovalev, because Ward isn’t easy to hit, and he’s going to be taking advantage of every wild punch that Kovalev throws in the fight by countering him each time.
Kovalev gets easily flustered when things aren’t going his way in his fights. Look at Kovalev’s matches against Cedcric Agnew, Isaac Chilemba and Nathan Cleverly. Early in those fights, Kovalev struggled to land his shots, and he looked uncomfortable when he was getting hit back. Even in Kovalev’s two fights with Jean Pascal, he was uncomfortable with the speed, power and the counter punching.