Kovalev has rematch clause for Ward fight

By Boxing News - 11/20/2016 - Comments

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By Eric Baldwin: Former IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev and his promoter Kathy Duva are extremely disappointed with last Saturday’s narrow 12 round unanimous decision loss to unbeaten former super middleweight champion Andre Ward in front of a crowd of mostly Ward supporters of 13,310 fans at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

There will be a rematch between Kovalev and Ward, but the details will need to be worked out before the news can be revealed to the boxing public for a second fight.

You would have to hope for Kovalev’s sake that the rematch doesn’t end up in Ward’s hometown of Oakland, California. That would be really tough on Kovalev to win in a tough environment like that with the fans firmly on Ward’s side. But then again, Ward had the fans on his side last night. It wouldn’t be surprising if many of the fans in the audience traveled from Oakland to see Ward.

Kovalev lost by a slim 114-113, 114- 113 and 114-113 score. This writer had Kovalev winning 8 rounds to 4. It’s interesting to know that HBO unofficial scorer Harold Lederman scored the fight 116-111 for Kovalev. Dan Rafael scored the fight 116-112 for Kovalev. Many people in the media saw it as a clear win for Kovalev. That wasn’t because the people in the media like fighters that are aggressive and pushing the fight. It was because Kovalev appeared to land the harder shots, and he was making the fight happen.

Kovalev was fighting. Ward was doing a lot of holding and moving. It was less fighting from Ward, and more stalling. Ward was specifically using holding to negate Kovlev’s offense, and he was able to get away with it.

The results of the fight were booed by many fans in the audience afterwards. However, there were still a lot of cheers from the pro-Ward crowd.

I thought Ward did a good job of coming back after being knocked down by a hard right hand in the 2nd round, but I don’t think he came back to blank Kovalev in the 2nd half of the fight, which is what two of the three judges saw. They had Kovalev losing the last 6 rounds of the fight. Ward didn’t look that good in the second half of the fight.

Ward’s movement, holding and wrestling made it hard to give many rounds to him. Kovalev was landing the harder shots and putting the pressure on Ward to make it a boxing match. Like I said, Ward was doing a lot of wrestling and moving, which made it impossible to give him more than three rounds in the last six. Referee Robert Byrd did little to control Ward’s holding and wrestling in the second half of the contest.

Byrd pretty much left it up to Kovalev to work pry Ward off of him along. That’s usually the referee’s job. It’s also the referee’s job to warn, penalize or disqualify a fighter when they’re using holding/wrestling as a tactic to negate the offense of their opponents. Holding isn’t supposed to be used for that purpose. Byrd failed to control Ward’s holding and wrestling, and it marred the fight, making it less interesting. For wrestling fans, they might of loved what Ward was doing, but for fans of boxing, it was hard to watch.

Kovalev has a rematch clause in his contract with Ward, so they will be fighting him again. What’s not known at this time is when the rematch will take place. If Ward is able to take an interim fight before the rematch, then Kovalev will need to wait for a while before he gets his mandated rematch.

The three judges that worked the fight seemed to be in agreement that Ward won most of the last six rounds of the fight. This goes against what many of the boxing fans felt, as they felt that Kovalev had won at least three of the last six rounds.

Judge John McKae gave Ward rounds 7 through 12. Judge Burt Clemens scored rounds 5-11 for Ward. Judge Glenn Trowbridge gave Ward rounds 7-12 for Ward.

With the way that the judges gave Ward most if not all of the last six rounds of the fight, it’s a wonder that the scores were as close as they were, as they weren’t giving Kovalev much credit for anything he was doing. The fight that the three judges saw was a vastly different one than what many boxing fans scored it. Of course, the crowd at the T-Mobile Arena was clearly backing Ward. It makes you wonder whether the judges hurt the crowd support for Ward and were unknowingly influenced by the cheering.

Ward said he wasn’t surprised he got the victory despite having been knocked down early in the fight.

“This is a beautiful thing. We did it, baby. It’s a lot of hardware,” Ward said. “Surreal. This is what we set out to do. I’m a five-[belt] world champion in two different weight classes. Man, it’s amazing. This sounds good — the new light heavyweight champ. This was my most important and satisfying win.”

Ward has looked a lot better in his fights in the past than he did tonight. The Ward from 2009-2011 was more active in the ring, and faster with his hands. The Ward of the past won fights in a more one-sided manner without the kind of controversy we saw tonight. Ward did like to grapple with his opponents through when fighting tougher guys.

In Ward’s wins over Carl Froch, Allan Green and Sakio Bika, he did a lot of holding and smothering on the inside to get the victories. However, Ward still was much more impressive the way he fought back then compared to what we saw last night against Kovalev. That’s not just because Ward was arguably fighting a better fighter in Kovalev. Ward was faster and more active in the past in his best years than what we saw against Kovalev. Ward seemed only capable of landing left hands against Kovalev. Ward used to be able to land right hands in his fights. We didn’t see that against Kovalev. It almost all left hands from Ward.

“I was not surprised when I heard the decision,” Ward said. “I don’t know where you got that from. I know it was a close fight. The crowd, you can hear they thought I won. [Kovalev] did everything I expected him to do. He started to show up as I expected. He started to fight like I expected. My coach [Virgil Hunter] did a great job.”

What Ward isn’t saying is that the pro-Ward crowd was on his side even before the fight started. Kovalev was booed as he came out into the arena by the fans. Ward was cheered when he came into the ring. It was obvious from the very start that the crowd was on Ward’s side. It’s only nature that the boxing fans would cheer the outcome of the fight, but that doesn’t mean that Ward actually won the fight in the minds of fans that were neutral and having no favorite. Speaking for myself, I’m not a fan of either fighter, but I thought Kovalev was simply the better fighter in 8 of the 12 rounds. The knockdown Kovalev scored in the 2nd round should have been more than enough to give Kovalev the victory, as he did a better job than Ward in fighting in 8 of the 12 rounds in my view.

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