Kovalev vs. Ward I: Who really won?

By Jeff Aranow: Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev will soon be facing each other in the squared circle in a badly needed rematch on June 17, and there are many boxing fans that are still hopping mad at the results of their first fight last November. I scored that fight 3 rounds for Ward and 9 rounds for Kovalev. If I was to change the scoring, I would give Kovalev another round rather than giving Ward more rounds. Kovalev won the fight in a convincing manner.

In looking at the 2 fighters afterwards, Ward’s face looked beaten up, swollen and red. Kovalev’s face was virtually unmarked. It looked like he hadn’t even fought. Ward’s punches left no mark on his face. Ward looked like he had taken a lot of punishment in the fight judging by the look of his swollen face. It was an accident that Ward’s face looked like that. Kovalev had put in a lot of work in getting him to look like that. The rounds that Kovalev won were a lot clearer than the ones that Ward won. The reason for that was because Kovalev was moving forward and fighting from the outside more. Ward was generally holding and throwing short punches on the inside.

The fight was scored 114-113, 114-113 and 114-113 by the three judges. In the aftermath of the fight, there were some boxing fans and athletes that said that Ward had controlled the fight. Ward wasn’t controlling the fight that I saw. Controlling a fight is when someone like Floyd Mayweather is controlling a fight against a fighter like Andre Berto or Robert Guerrero. Ward wasn’t doing that against Kovalev.

Ward appeared to be losing rounds by not throwing enough punches, and depending too much on his short punches on the inside. Ward lacked power on his short punches. They weren’t throw with the same power that Kovalev was throwing his.

Former HBO Boxing commentator Larry Merchant saw Kovalev as the winner of the fight against Ward. Merchant called it a hometown decision.

“I thought Kovalev clearly won the fight,” said Merchant. “I thought Kovalev build up such a lead in the first half of the fight, including a knockdown, unless Ward did something, some serious danger, he would have to win the rest of the rounds and I didn’t think he did.

Did he put a hurt on Kovalev? Did he throw more than one punch at a time in the fight? I thought the other guy put more hurt on him, knocked him down and beat him. A hometown decision, Oceans 11 inside the ring. That’s how Ward always fights. Some people call him the ‘Anaconda,’” said Merchant about Ward.

The scores from the judges were vastly different from how the boxing world saw the fight. The judges were giving Ward pretty much all the close rounds of the fight. You don’t normally see judges giving all of the close rounds to one fighter, but that’s what happened in the Kovalev-Ward fight. It’s good that there is a rematch taking place between these two fighters. The only downside of the rematch is the venue taking place in Las Vegas again. That’s a move that will greatly favor Ward just as it did last time. Ward overwhelmingly had the crowd on his side the last time they fought. Kovalev made the mistake of agreeing to fight Ward in Vegas.

Kovalev might not have realized that it favored Ward in a big way to have the fight staged in Las Vegas instead of on the East Coast or in a place like Texas. For the rematch, Kovalev probably didn’t have a choice. But the fans are going to be on Ward’s side just like last time. It’ll be interesting to see if there’s another controversial decision. The crowd was cheering for Ward the entire time. They cheered everything he did. That put Kovalev in a bad position in the fight.

HBO commentator Roy Jones Jr. had Kovalev winning the fight over Ward last November.

“I’m not going to say I agreed with the decision, because in my eyes, I thought Kovalev pulled it off because of the knockdown,” said Roy Jones Jr. about the Kovalev-Ward I fight. “I thought Kovalev had the advantage early. The knockdown put him ahead. The rematch will tell us who really won the fight,” said Jones.

Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) gave it his best shot, but he came up short in most of the rounds. I was keeping track of the punches, and Kovalev did better. He knocked Ward down in the 2nd round. The knockdown made it next to impossible for me to give the fight to Ward, because he failed to come back from that incident to show that he had earned the ‘W’ by the end of the fight.

I feel that it’s important that the judges come down with a decision that is in agreement with the majority of the boxing fans. Picking Ward would have made sense if he hadn’t been knocked down, and if he wasn’t getting hit with the harder shots in each round. Selecting Ward despite him getting dropped and not going much fighting, it gave the impression to some boxing fans that the judges were affected by the crowd noise.

The Ward-Kovalev rematch should settle things once and for all unless there’s another controversial decision.

Hopefully, that’s not what we see in the fight, but I think there’s a very real possible barring a knockout. There are some boxing fans that believe that Ward will win by a landslide decision this time. They think it will go down like this because they see Ward having figured Kovalev out from their first fight, and will be able to start in from where he left off. That might be wishful thinking by some boxing fans. Ward wasn’t dominating the fight at the end of the 12th round.

The best way for the rematch to end is by a knockout so that the judges don’t have any say so in the fight. The only fighter with a chance of winning by that method is Kovalev. Ward can’t punch at the light heavyweight level. He’s not going to knockout Kovalev in this fight, and I doubt that he’ll even try.