By Allan Fox: Trainer John David Jackson says his fighter former light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) will make two improvements in his game to adapt for his rematch against Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) in 2017. Kovalev will be attacking Ward to the body with power shots, and he’ll have worked on conditioning so that he doesn’t run out of gas in the second half of the contest.
The boxing skills department appeared to be pretty evenly matched between the two fighters. Where Ward was clearly better than Kovalev was his inside wrestling technique. Ward was able to wrestle Kovalev from rounds 5 through 12 to limit the amount of shots he was able to throw in the fight.
The referee was just hanging out and watching the action without policing the holding. You might as well have had a boxing fan inside the ring sitting on chair to watch the action, because the referee was doing nothing to control the holding in the fight. Kovalev didn’t get much help from the referee. That’s where Jackson might have slipped on in the training department.
Jackson should have known that Ward was going to wrestle Kovalev for 12 rounds to prepare for the fight, Jackson should have brought some MMA guys into camp to work on Kovalev’s standup wrestling technique. The sparring should have been 12 rounds of Kovalev trying to peel an MMA fighter off of his upper body. By the time Kovalev got out of camp with that kind of training, he would have been more than ready for anything Ward did in the fight. Instead, Kovalev did not look prepared for Ward’s wrestling, and he ended up getting tired in the second half.
As far as Jackson is concerned, Kovalev won their fight last month on November 19 on HBO pay-per-view from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. Jackson believes that Kovalev did enough to win the fight by the scores 9-3. Jackson says that Ward won the decision, but he didn’t win the fight. It was the judges that scored the fight in Ward’s favor by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113, but he didn’t win the fight in Jackson’s mind. Jackson feels that Kovalev won 5 of the first 6 rounds, and then 3 out of 3 of the last 6.
Jackson doesn’t see Ward as being able to improve enough in the rematch to beat Kovalev. If Ward tries to stand and trade shots, he’s going to lose to Kovalev. Jackson wonders if Ward is going to try to throw more punches in the rematch than he did the last time. That’s the only thing that Jackson feels Ward can do to try and improve, and if he does that, he’s going to get knocked out by Kovalev.
Jackson said this to Fighthype.com about the Ward vs. Kovalev rematch in 2017:
“Better conditioning,” said Jackson when asked what he wants to Kovalev to improve for the Ward rematch. “The last two rounds, he didn’t throw the jab. The first six rounds, he was 5-1. The second half of the fight, it was like 3-3. I had 9-3. He won the fight. Now we have to go back to the drawing board. He [Kovalev] wasn’t able to step on the gas in the late rounds when he should have. How much more can Andre do? He’s not a big puncher. What are they going to do in the rematch? Punch more? He went to the body to a certain degree, and that was good, but now I would have Sergey go to the body more. Let’s see if Andre wants to stand there and trade body shots. He can’t do much more than he did. He got the decision and he survived, but how much more can he really do? He can’t stand there and trade with Sergey. They were both holding. They were both doing the same thing. Andre needs to be honest with himself. Did he really win the fight? No. You got the decision, but did you really win the fight? Be honest with yourself. Don’t cheat the public. Be honest. He got the decision. It’s the judges that messed it up.”
Kovalev can help himself if he learns how to fight better on the inside. That means holding less and throwing more body shots. If Ward is going to be holding in close, which is probably a given, then Kovalev needs to train how to work one hand free and hammer Ward to the head and to the body with whatever hand he can get free.
Kovalev should work on throwing with as much power as possible while being held on the inside. If Kovalev can punch Ward badly for each time he initiated the wrestling/holding on the inside, then you can bet that Ward will stop holding. Kovalev has to make Ward not want to hold and wrestle. The only way you can do that is by hitting Ward as hard as possible each time he gets in close.
Ward will eventually learn that it’s not advantageous to grapple with Kovalev. Ward will then stay on the outside and look to win the fight by jabbing. Kovalev can beat Ward from the outside, because he’s going to be landing power shots to Ward’s jabs.
It’ll be a lot easier for the judges to score the fight in the rematch if the fight takes place with both guys on the outside throwing punches rather than wrestling in close. It’ll be better for the boxing fans too, because they’ll see an actual fight with punches rather than holding for 12 rounds. It was really boring last time with Kovalev and Ward holding and the referee standing there doing nothing.
I don’t think Ward is going to try and throw more power punches in the rematch with the 33-year-old Kovalev. Ward can’t do that, because Kovalev is too good at countering with his left hook and right hand for Ward to increase his power shots. Ward doesn’t have the hand speed needed for him to land a power shot without getting countered by Kovalev.
The only thing that Ward can do different in terms of his offense is to use his jab more. That’s the only weapon that Ward had any confidence in the last time. It was the only offensive tool that Ward could get away with throwing without getting hit back by Kovalev.
