Ward says Kovalev must mentally bounce back for rematch

By Boxing News - 12/21/2016 - Comments

Image: Ward says Kovalev must mentally bounce back for rematch

By Allan Fox: Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) claims that Sergey Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) was mentally broken by him in losing by a close 12 round decision last month on November 19. Ward says that for Kovalev to be able to comeback from the loss, he’s going to need to come back mentally from the defeat.

Ward, 32, isn’t sure that Kovalev can come back. He sees him making excuses about his loss rather than acknowledging where he failed he failed to adjust. Kovalev doesn’t look like he’s falling apart in his interviews after the fight. He just seemed to be under the impression that he’s going to need to take the judges out of the equation in the rematch by knocking Ward out.

There’s a lot of boxing fans that think that Ward got a home country decision with his narrow 12 round decision victory over the Russian Kovalev. Some feel that the crowd, which appeared to be a pro-Ward crowd, had an influence on the outcome of the fight with the way that they were cheering loudly for him the entire fight. As it was, Ward barely won by the scores 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113. Those scores could have easily been flipped in Kovalev’s favor with a different set of judges working the fight. The scores might have been wide in favor of Kovalev with different judges. Some of the HBO people had Kovalev winning. These weren’t guys that had any kind of bias. They just saw Kovalev as the better fighter. That’s why it would seem silly for Kovalev to have to recover mentally from the fight when the only thing he would need to come to terms with is understanding that judges sometimes see things different than the larger population.

Ward said this to Fighthype.com about his fight against Kovalev:

“He should acknowledge that instead of making excuses,” said Ward. “It’s not a good look for the Krusher. He was mentally beaten and physically broken down. That’s never happened to him. He’s going to have to mentally bounce back if there is a rematch, and I’m not sure he can. It is the first time a fight didn’t go his way. Now he’s falling apart and blaming everyone but himself. This is showing me a lot about him as a person. It’s a weakness of sorts; very revealing. It’s a side I’ve never seen from him before. Not a good look,” said Ward.

There’s really not much that Kovalev has to fix for him to beat Ward in the rematch. Kovalev was the better fighter on the outside in my view. The only area that Ward looked to be the better fighter was on the inside with his wrestling and holding. Ward definitely at another level with his ability to hold and grappled. I knew that Ward was going to be better than Kovalev in that area. I don’t think Kovalev realized fully what kind of fight that was going to occur.

If Kovalev knew ahead of time that Ward would spend the last 10 rounds smothering his offense by holding and wrestling on the inside, then I think he would have worked on these areas more in training camp. Kovalev’s trainer John David Jackson should have brought a wrestler into camp to have him doing nothing but wrestling in the standup position.

If Kovalev had eight weeks of training with a wrestler, I think he would have beaten Ward, because he would have learned how to get out of holds that he was putting on him. Ideally, the referee should have done his job to limit the holding on the inside, but I don’t think they do much nowadays to control that aspect of the game. In the past, you would see a referee that would not tolerate holding and wrestling. But nowadays it seems that they just let it go on and do nothing to control that aspect of the game. I think it makes it very dull for boxing fans to see fights that involve lots of prolonged holding, because it’s not entertaining. But it takes quality referees to limit that kind of stuff.

Kovalev needs to come into the rematch with Ward knowing that he’s going to be held a lot. As long as Kovalev understands how Ward is going to fight him, then there’s no excuse for him not being ready for 12 rounds of that type of a fight. Ward can fight on the outside when he wants to, but he clearly doesn’t have the offensive skills to match Kovalev in fighting at a distance. Kovalev has a better jab and far superior power. That’s why I think Ward is going to do even more smothering in the rematch than he did in their previous fight.

We still don’t know if the Ward vs. Kovalev rematch is going to take place. Ward hinted recently about possibly retiring if the rematch with Kovalev doesn’t make business sense to him.