By Chris Williams: Former light welterweight champion Kostya Tszyu saw former IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev’s loss to Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) last Saturday night, and he feels that Kovalev failed to do what he needed to do in order to get the victory.
Kovalev was fighting an American Olympic gold medalist in his own country and he should have done what he needed to in order to get the victory. Tszyu says that instead of blaming the judges for not getting the victory, Kovalev needs to look at what he failed to do right so that he can learn from it rather than repeating the same mistakes in the rematch.
One thing that Kovalev failed to do was fight on the inside. Once Ward realized that Kovalev had no intentions of trying to fight him in close, he made it a point to force him to fight in that manner. This meant that Kovalev had to waste valuable energy grabbing Ward to keep him from getting his shots off. It’s harder to hold someone down than it is for a fighter who is trying to get his shots off.
Ward wasn’t trying to hold Kovalev. He was trying to work his hands free so that he could throw punches. Kovalev ended up exhausting himself with all the holding he was doing in the fight. By the 8th round, Kovalev looked tired, and his punches no longer had the zip on them that they previously had.
“In this fight with Ward, something went wrong,” said Tszyu about Kovalev to Allboxingru. “I would not be so straightforward [to call it robbery]…The fight was held at the home of Ward, where he is a legend, the idol of millions. Therefore it was necessary for Sergey to win in a manner where no one would have even the minimum amount of doubt.”
Kovalev, 33, made the mistake of thinking he could out-box Ward and get a decision in a close fight in the U.S. That was mistake No.1 Mistake No. 2 for Kovalev was his decision not to fight on the inside. I don’t know if that was Kovalev’s decision or his trainer John David Jackson’s. Regardless, it was a mistake for Kovalev to shut off the entire part of the fight and just give it to Ward. Kovalev gave Ward the inside and didn’t even try to compete with him in close.
All Kovalev did was hold. When judges see stuff like that, they score against you. Kovalev’s trainer Jackson should have prepared him better for this fight by giving him a crash course on fighting on the inside. Kovalev should have watched a lot of tape on old school fighters that had great inside games like Julio Cesar Chavez, because he needed to be able to compete with Ward in that facet of the game. If Kovalev and Jackson had taken the time to watch some of Ward’s fights in the Super Six tournament from five years ago, they would have known that he was likely going to make it an inside fight.
Kovalev’s mistake was thinking he could negate Ward’s inside fighting simply by holding him. Kovalev underestimated Ward’s strength and wrestling ability, because he’s too clever to be held on the inside for 12 rounds. Ward was going to find a way to get his shots off on the inside. It was Kovalev’s mistake not to try and beat him at that game by throwing his own punches.
It’s easier to throw punches in close than it is to hold. Wrestling takes energy and tires a fighter out. That’s why Kovalev shouldn’t have even tried to hold and wrestle. If it was Kovalev’s trainer Jackson’s idea for him to hold for 12 rounds, then he should think about switching him out in place of a trainer like Abel Sanchez, who taught middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Sanchez would have realized that it would be fruitless for Kovalev to try and tie Ward up for 12 rounds. He would have known how draining that would have been for Kovalev. Sanchez would have taught Kovalev the basics to fight on the inside, and he likely would have had him up to speed in that area by the time he entered the ring to fight Ward last Saturday. If Jackson didn’t trainer Kovalev to fight on the inside for the Ward fight, then he needs to think about getting someone that can prepare him better for fights.
Kovalev will never beat Ward in the rematch if all he does is hold in close, and then just try and fight on the outside. Kovalev will be too tired to throw punches from all the wrestling he’s doing with Ward. It’ll be a repeat of last Saturday’s fight. In fact, I think it’ll be worse for Kovalev in the rematch, because Ward will start fighting on the inside starting from the 1st round rather than waiting until the 3rd to start fighting on the inside.
“When I lost my first fight with Vince Phillips in 1997, I then began to search for the reason in myself and didn’t spend time addressing the judges and the referee,” said Tszyu. “I asked myself the question: what did I do wrong? And in the end I found my weaknesses, worked hard on them and regained all of the titles.”
Tszyu was stopped in the 10th round by a bigger and stronger Vince Philips in May 1997. Philips was bouncing right hands off of Tszyu’s chin all night long in that fight. He finally hurt Tszyu in the 10th and flurried on him until the referee had to step in and halt the fight. Philips nailed Tszyu with four consecutive right hands to the head to finish him off against the ropes. However, I don’t think that Tszyu improved and learned from that loss to Philips, even though he did win his next 13 fights. Tszyu never avenged his loss to Philips so you can’t say he learned from the loss or not. What we did see was Tszyu being exposed by Ricky Hatton in their fight in 2005. Hatton stopped Tszyu in the 11th round of that fight by punishing him with uppercuts and body shots in close. Tszyu got worked over on the inside by Hatton. Tszyu didn’t show any inside fighting skills. He was just like Kovalev. After losing to Hatton, Tszyu retired from boxing. It’s too bad we didn’t get a chance to see Tszyu learn from the loss and come back to fight Hatton in a rematch, because it would have been interesting to see if he could have made adjustments. All I know is Tszyu lost twice in defeats to Philips and Hatton, and he never avenged either of those losses.
“To be honest, I did not like the previous fight with Sergey in Ekaterinburg. In the confrontation with Isaac Chilemba he did not look as confident as he usually is,” said Tszyu about Kovalev. “It seems to me that he hasn’t learned all the lessons from the battlefield, which negatively affected him in the confrontation with Ward.”
It goes without saying that Kovalev hasn’t learned his lessons from his loss to Ward, because he’s still talking about the judges instead of admitting what he failed to do in the fight. When Kovalev starts taking responsibility for his loss to Ward by saying that he could have done more by fighting on the inside, then you’ll know that he’s on the right path to learning from the defeat. That still doesn’t mean that Kovalev will be able to learn to fight well enough on the inside to beat Ward in the rematch.
It takes a long time to learn to fight on the inside. Some fighters never do learn how to develop the boxing skills to fight in close. Other fighters pick it up quickly. Kovalev is going to need to try and learn if he wants to beat Ward in the rematch, because I don’t think he’s going to be able to knock him out from the outside. Ward is going to close the distance immediately in the rematch, and stay in tight for the full 12 rounds. When Ward is given space, he’ll be jabbing and moving, and making it impossible for Kovalev to land his power shots.