Ward vs. Kovalev II: Andre a slight favorite

By Boxing News - 04/04/2017 - Comments

Image: Ward vs. Kovalev II: Andre a slight favorite

By Allan Fox: Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) is a slight favorite to defeat Sergey Kovalev in their rematch on June 17 on HBO pay-per-view at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. The Ward-Kovalev II fight was made official as of Tuesday. The Ward vs. Kovalev II fight is official! This is great news for the many boxing fans that having been waiting on pins and needles to find out when/if the fight would take place. The slogan for the Ward vs. Kovalev II rematch is “No excuses.” This is obviously a shot at Kovalev, who felt that he deserved the decision in their previous fight on November 19.

Ward is favored by the line -155 over Kovalev at +125, according to Bovada. It’s questionable that Ward is the favorite in the fight because many of the boxing fans saw him losing to Kovalev in their fight on November 19 last year. Ward was knocked down in round 2, and spent much of the last 10 rounds of the fight clinching Kovalev. There was a short punches thrown by Ward while the two of them holding each other. The judges overwhelmingly gave Ward most of the last 5 rounds of the fight. There was not much action though. When Ward was pulled off of Kovalev, the action seemed to favor the Russian fighter. He was landing the better shots when the two of them had room to throw punches from the distance.

Ward-Kovalev will be fighting at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas, Nevada. It’ll be another Vegas fight for Kovalev. Hopefully, the judges aren’t influenced unconsciously by the loud cheering in the fight. Ward was getting most of the cheering when he would throw punches the last time.
”I’m going to keep it short and sweet. You got what you asked for,” said Ward. ”Now you have to see me on June 17. This time, leave the excuses at home,” said Ward.

The way that Ward is talking, you’d think that he wants to quiet his critics with the Kovalev rematch. What Ward should have been saying is that he’ll be looking to make it more exciting for the boxing fans this time by not mauling for 12 rounds. I think that’s what the fans really would like. The fans want to see exciting fights, and the last Kovalev-Ward fight was far from an exciting one.

For the odds-makers to pick the 33-year-old Ward to beat Kovalev again, they have to be assuming that the rematch will play out similar to how the first fight went. This would mean that as soon as the fight starts, Ward would close the distance and attach himself to Kovalev and begin the mauling process. I’m not sure if that strategy will work a second time for Ward. Kovalev clearly wasn’t ready for the inside grappling from Ward in their fight last November. Kovalev should have been ready, but he wasn’t. If Kovalev had looked at Ward’s past fights against Chad Dawson, Allan Green, Carl Froch and Sakio Bika, he’d have known that the fight was going to be fought on the inside.

”I’m glad to know that rematch will happen,” said Kovalev. ”I really hope that Andre Ward will get into the ring for this rematch. Fans of boxing will see the real ‘Krusher’- the one they have missed for couple of my last fights. For my this rematch is very important as no other bout in my entire boxing career,” said Kovalev.

Kovalev, 34, still looks like he’s in the prime of his career despite his advancing age. When he’s throwing punches, he looks very good. Kovalev’s jab and his punching power looked extraordinary last November against Ward. I have no doubts that if the fight were to have been conducted on the outside, Kovalev would have knocked Ward without any problems. However, Kovalev wasn’t ready for a full night of wrestling with Ward, and it showed clearly in how tired he was in the second half of the fight. Kovalev was exhausted from the 3 minutes of pure wrestling in each round.

The referee wasn’t going to do anything to address the grappling from Ward, so Kovalev was out there on his own on that night. In the rematch, if Kovalev isn’t ready for another 12 rounds of similar wrestling, then he’s going to have problems. I’m not sure if Kovalev will lose the fight, but it’ll be a very difficult fight. I thought Kovalev did the better work. It’s just there were so few instances where there was actual clean fighting. When a fight erodes into one where both guys are holding and throwing only short punches, it’s hard to really score the fight.

The referee is supposed to do his job by separating the fighters, and not just leaving them out there to wrestle. That didn’t happen last time. If there’s a good referee for the rematch on June 17, then it’s hard to see Kovalev losing the fight. His jab and power is better than Ward’s.

The undercard for the Ward-Kovalev II fight will have WBA super bantamweight champion Guillermo Rigondeaux defending his title against #1 WBA Moises Flores. This fight prove to have the most action on the card if the Ward vs. Kovalev match-up turns out to be similar to what we saw the last time they fought. Rigondeaux is a pure boxer who rarely takes chances with his opponents, but at least he doesn’t do a lot of holding. We’re not going to see Rigondeaux attach himself to Flores the way Ward did with Kovalev, and then spend the next 12 rounds pushing and pulling on the inside. Flores likes to punch, and he’s got excellent power and size. We’re going to see if the 36-year-old Rigondeaux has enough youth left for him to get past this very real threat.

Kovalev has a better chance of improving over his previous performance than Ward does. The element of surprise is now gone for Ward. If the only thing that Ward can do is go back to his grappling, he’s probably going to be out of luck. There are rumors that Kovalev is going to be working with an MMA fighter during camp to defeat Ward’s inside holding and wrestling. If Ward can’t get the better of Kovalev on the inside like he did last time, then the only other thing he can do is to use a lot of movement for 12 rounds to be evasive and jab from the outside.
If we can see pure action in the Ward-Kovalev II rematch, then it’ll be a great treat for the many boxing fans that will be purchasing it on HBO PPV.

The venue for the Ward-Kovalev II fight favors Ward, as he had many more boxing fans that attended the fight last November than Kovalev. Ward is from Oakland, California, and that’s a lot closer to Las Vegas than Kovalev’s home country of Russia. Kovalev lives in Florida. If the fight were to take place in New York, where there’s a large Russian community, then it would be a little more even. Having the rematch in Las Vegas means that Ward’s boxing fans will likely greatly outnumber Kovalev’s fans.

Ward will have his IBF, WBA, WBO light heavyweight titles on the line for the fight. Those belts were previously in the hands of Kovalev last November when the two of them fought the first time.