By Matthias Predonzan: A large part of predictions, especially between journalists, for the fight between Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev are in favor of the Russian fighter.
The old saying that a boxer always defeats a puncher, for some reason this time is not taken into consideration from the most of boxing reporters and commentators I have listened or red about.
There are three main reasons for this trend and if two them I find it quite reasonable, the third, honestly, I don’t understand it.
The first motivation is that Ward is moving up from super-middleweight, the weight class where he got his success through his career, into light-heavyweight, the category where Sergey Kovalev is an established champion.
Having said that, I think has to be considered that Ward is not fighting for the first time in the heavier weight class and also that Ward frame is basically the same as Kovalev. The two fighters share the same height and there is only one-inch reach in favor of Kovalev.
The second reason is that Ward hasn’t fought much in the last four years.
Well, not so often like Kovalev but 19 months, the break between Rodriguez and Smith fights is really not something uncommon and since then, Ward fought already twice, in the light-heavyweight class and won both the fights dominating the contenders.
And here is the point where I struggle with the most of the commentators’ opinion:
The last fights of Ward, since when he fought for the Super-Six tournament in the super middleweight class, where against poor opposition.
Poor compared to what?
If compared to his previous opposition, no doubt I have to agree but here we are not discussing a fight between the “Super-Six Tournament Ward” and the “after-come-back Ward”. We are discussing a fight between Ward and Kovalev and I cannot see any contender of great quality in Kovalev pedigree, recently and formerly.
If we consider poor opposition fighters like Chad Dawson, Edwin Rodriguez, Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera and Alexander Brand (with the due respect I can agree only on Smith), what about the fighters that Kovalev fought? I’m talking of fighters like Isaac Chilemba, Jean Pascal (twice- why twice if the first fight was dominated by Kovalev and won by KO?), Nadjib Mohammedi, Bernard Hopkins (yes, that Hopkins, the guy that was world champion when Kovalev was 12 years old), Blake Caparello, Cedric Agnew, Ismayl Sillah and Nathan Cleverly.
Everything before was even at lover level.
I understand the necessity to create hype around fights. This is what journalists do for a living.
As we have seen two weeks ago, Jessie Vargas didn’t have any chance against Manny Pacquiao. Nonetheless the fight was presented as a close one (was instead very good but not close at all).
Here, with Word vs Kovalev we have really a fight where the underdog fighter has chances. Why do not build the hype around this point, instead to create a fake reality where Kovalev is favorite for the win?
I was amazed listening David Faitelson pricing Kovalev’s amateur career.
This was one of the reasons why, he thought, Kovalev was favorite over Ward in this fight.
Kovalev was second in the Russian Amateur championship.
How can this result be seen as a plus, in a confrontation where the other guy won the Olympic gold medal?
Everything Kovalev achieved is magnified and what Ward did is not taken into consideration.
But are we sure that the promotion factor is the only reason involved?
I have the feeling that with Andre Ward we are facing again the same situation we faced many time before, for example with Floyd Mayweather Jr.
A lot of jealousy is involved, that makes fans just to hope for somebody to beat the blessed guy. The fighter that is able to win fights, using his skill and without to pay a price in terms of punishment.
As we saw with Floyd, every time he beat a contender that was supposed to defeat him, his merits were diminished as the quality of his opponent.
Chad Dawson was considered a hell of a fighter before to fight Ward and then, suddenly, he became a guy that lost the fight only because he was weight drained.
Kovalev supporters will not be able to use this very same excuse.
As I wrote above, I think that a big puncher, like Kovalev, has a chance in this fight but my opinion is that Ward will easily take control of the match.
Something like we have seen already, when Mayweather took to school a young, big and strong Canelo Alvarez.
I had a further confirmation of how things will go tonight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, looking at the stare down of the two boxers during the weigh in.
Kovalev was agitated from Ward stare down and breathing heavily. This is a clear sign of the fact that the psychological pre-fight war was won by Ward that was, is this way, staking a claim on how the fight will go in term of ring generalship.
It will be a great fight. I just hope that if Ward is going to win against Kovalev, he should be legitimately considered the best pound for pound fighter. Not only the other way around.