By Allan Fox: Trainer John David Jackson believes that unbeaten Andre Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) is a fighter in decline and can be knocked out early by IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) this Saturday night in their fight on HBO pay-per-view. Jackson sees definite decline in Ward since he made his comeback three fights ago after being out of the ring for two years due to promotional issues.
Jackson still thinks Ward has something left in his game, but he notes that he’s not able to move like he used to and his reflexes aren’t the same. If Kovalev hurts Ward, the 32-year-old Oakland native could be taken out by him.
Ward is still seen as the favorite by a lot of boxing fans, but that doesn’t mean anything. Most of those fans still seem to be trapped in the past in remembering the Ward that is no longer in existence. That version of Ward is from 2,000 yesterdays’ ago in 2011. The current version of Ward is a completely different fighter, and not as fast, not as mobile, and not as a good defensively. It’s slower version of Ward, and that’s not good news for him.
Jackson said this to skysports.com about his thoughts on Ward vs. Kovalev:
“I’m definitely not saying that Andre is past it but for me he is on a slow decline,” said Jackson. “He is 32 and if you look at his last few fights, he does not move as fluently as he once did and his timing can be a bit off…His last fight against [Alexander] Brand certainly did not help him prepare for Sergey.”
With the way that Ward was immobile in his last three fights, he’s definitely on the decline. Ward’s three fights of his comeback have come against these guys: Paul Smith, Sullivan Barrera and Alexander Brand. The fights against the 39-year-old Brand and Paul Smith were a total waste of time in preparing Ward for Kovalev. Those are not light heavyweights, and they’re not particularly good fighters. It was a waste of time for Ward’s promoters at Roc Nation to match him against those fighters, but it was really bad to have him fighting Brand right before the Kovalev fight.
Brand is someone that would prepare Ward to fight a fringe contender in the 168lb division. He’s not even worthy of being useful to prepare Ward to fight a super middleweight champion like Gilberto Ramirez, James DeGale or Badou Jack. You have to wonder whether it was a money thing in Roc Nation choosing Alexander Brand for Ward instead of a quality fighter from the light heavyweight division. You can argue that when you prepare poorly, you get poor results. It’s the same with anything. When you prepare in a superficial manner, as you can argue that Ward has done, then you don’t put yourself in the best possible position to succeed.
Ward feels that his entire career in boxing has already prepared him for the Kovalev fight, but I disagree. That’s not an excuse for Ward fighting Alexander Brand in preparation for the Kovalev fight. Ward did not look good against Barrera or Paul Smith. I thought the Barrera could have gone the other way if Barrera had thrown more punches. It was a winnable fight for Barrera, but he got his tactics wrong. He landed the harder shots, and was giving Ward a lot of problems throughout the fight, but in the end, Barrera got his tactics wrong by not focusing on volume punching.
“Ward can be taken out early, if Sergey lands cleanly early on then Ward is gone,” said Jackson. “If he manages to get back up, he will still be hurt and is now a sitting duck. Once Sergey smells blood, he will go for the knockout. Reports say he’s going to stand and fight and go to Sergey’s body and we want that, he will leave himself wide open for counter punching.”
Ward might try and experiment initially by standing and punching with Kovalev, but I suspect that he’s going to quickly abandon that game plan right away once he gets hit hard a few times. Ward doesn’t have the armament to stand and trade with Kovalev. If Ward makes the mistake of getting stuck in one place for any length of time, he’s going to get blown away by Kovalev, because he doesn’t have the work rate or the punching power to make it a dog fight.
Ward will need to cycle through different game plans almost immediately once he discovers that he can’t stand and fight Kovalev. The different tactics that Ward will use will be the usual ones he’s done in the past such as HOLDING, WRESTLING and MOVING. It goes without saying that Ward will be throwing pot shots in a Mayweather-esque fashion, because that’s his entire game. He’s not a volume puncher and never has been.
Ward can’t change who he is. Ward’s DNA as a fighter is already set in stone from many years ago. He’s never been a volume puncher ever, and he’s never had punching power. That’s not going to change just because he’s fighting what many boxing fans feel is the best fighter in the 175lb division in Kovalev. If Ward tries to change who he is as a fighter, he’s going to find out the hard way that you don’t do such things at this late point in one’s career.
Ward must stick with what got him to this point, and that’s throwing pot shots, moving if possible, holding and wrestling. If those things don’t work for Ward, then he can always try and have a last stand by switching to slugging. But he’s not going to last long against Kovalev by doing that. Ward isn’t going to last long by throwing pot shots and wrestling either. Those strategies are tired and will only work against the mediocre guys that Ward has fought since making his comeback last year.
“I’m very confident that Sergey will win and he knows exactly what to do against Andre,” said Jackson. We know that you can’t fall into Ward’s pitfalls.”
It would be surprising news if Ward tried to fight Kovalev instead of him using tricks to slow the fight down to a more manageable one to help him stall out the rounds. I think Ward is going to try and make sure that he stalls out the rounds so that Kovalev can’t throw more than a tiny handful of punches. If the rounds are decided by 10 to 20 punches thrown, then Ward has a good chance of winning that type of fight. However, if the rounds are decided on Kovalev throwing 80 to 100 punches to Ward’s 20, then there’s no way on earth that Ward can win that type of fight. He’s too much of a light hitter for him to impress the judges when he’s being hit by harder and more numerous shots from Kovalev.
That’s why Ward is probably going to look to stall the rounds by holding, grappling and moving as much as he can. If you’ve got a guy that throws more punches than you with more power, then the only thing you can do is stall the fight by limiting the amount of punches he can throw. Kovalev’s job will be to make sure he doesn’t get caught in prolonged grappling with Ward.
If the referee can’t be counted on to do his job to penalize Ward for excessive holding and wrestling, then Kovalev will need to take matters into his own hands to fight through those tricks so that he can turn the fight back into actual boxing match rather than a wrestling contest. The fans are not going to be happy if Ward just tries to stall out the fight by mauling Kovalev on the inside. This is a pay-per-view fight on HBO, and the paying fans are going to want to see entertainment, not wrestling. It’s supposed to be a fight that decides the pound-for-pound fighter. It will be hard to make the argument that Ward deserves to the No.1 guy if all he does is stall out the fight for 12 rounds.
