Lederman talks Ward vs. Kovalev 2

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Harold Lederman, HBO’s unofficial ringside scorer, is looking forward to this Saturday’s rematch between IBF/IWBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Andre “SOG” Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) and former 175-pound champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lederman points out that Kovalev knocked Ward down in the 2nd round of their first fight on November 19 last year, but the Russian fighter was unable to finish him off. Lederman says Ward was able to win enough rounds in the second half of the contest to “steal” the victory. It’s unclear what Lederman means by saying that Ward stole the fight. The judges were the ones that scored the fight. There are a lot of boxing fans that feel the outcome would have been a different one with a different set of judges, who might have scored the fight in Kovalev’s favor instead of Ward’s. Ultimately, the decision was a subjective one by the 3 judges that scored the fight, as Kovalev landed more shots and the harder shots as well. Kovalev also scored a knockdown in knocking Ward down. In looking at the punch stats, it would appear that Kovalev did enough to rate the win, but the judges that were assigned to the fight by the Nevada State Athletic Commission felt that Ward had done enough for them to give him the victory by the scores 115-113, 115-113 and 115-113.

“June 17th, it’ll be Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward,” said Harold Lederman of HBO Boxing. “This is a very good fight. We know that because they fought before. Kovalev scored a 2nd round knockdown. Andre got up. Kovalev didn’t finish him off, and Ward stole the fight in the last 5 or 6 rounds. He impressed the judges to the point where they gave him the fight based on what he did in the later rounds,” said Lederman.

The fight changed after Ward was knocked down in the 2nd round. At that point in the fight, Ward was actually trying to fight Kovalev on the outside, which Ward proved incapable of doing. Ward quickly realized at the end of the 2nd round that he couldn’t continue to fight Kovalev the way he’d been doing. After the 2nd round ended, Ward changed tactics by taking the fight to the inside and keeping it there for the remainder of the contest. Ward only rarely broke away from the mauling that he was doing on the inside. Even after Kovalev started to show fatigue from the many rounds of grappling with Ward, he was STILL able to get the better of Ward when the two were separated. Ward was just not able to compete with Kovalev anytime there was space between them.

Kovalev wasn’t getting credit from the judges for the rounds that he appeared to win in the 2nd half of the fight. The 10th round appeared to be a clear round in the eyes of this writer, as well as a lot of boxing fans, and surprisingly the judges gave that round to Ward too. Kovalev was up against it in that fight. He fought well enough to win, but he wasn’t going to win the fight with the way the three judges were scoring the fight. Kovalev would have needed to score knockdowns in the second half for him to get the win, but he couldn’t do that due to Ward grappling with him on the inside.

“It should be a sensational rematch; 2 guys that belong in the top 5 pound-for-pound fighters in the world, getting back in the ring against each other,” said Lederman. ”I don’t know who’s going to win the fight. Sergey didn’t get the decision. We’ll see what happens in this one. Can Ward out-punch him again and steal another decision or is Sergey Kovalev going to come back and knock him out? They’re saying all kinds of nasty things about each other, because they don’t like each other. That makes it more interesting. They seriously don’t like each other. That makes for a great fight. If you have 2 guys that love each other, I don’t know if they’re going to come in and beat the heck out of each other, but these 2 guys don’t like each other. So, we can expect a very, very great fight. That’s what I’m looking for,” said Lederman.

Since Ward didn’t out-punch Kovalev in the first fight, I don’t think he’s going to be able to out-punch him in the second contest. Ward doesn’t have the punching power, and he’s unable to throw combinations the way he needs to for him to beat Kovalev. What we mostly saw from Ward last time was him lowering his hands and throwing shots in close while grappling. There were punches thrown from Ward to the back, and thigh. The referee was missing in action. The referee took a very passive role for the fight. The fight could have been controlled in a much better way than it was, but it would have required he referee to give warnings and potentially take off points. He didn’t seem up that task. A good referee should be able to take charge of a fight to stop the extracurricular things we saw in the first Kovalev-Ward fight last November.

”I think it’s going to be as good a fight as it was the first time,” said Lederman. ”Possibly somebody is going to get knocked out in the 2nd fight. Possibly it’s going to be another controversial decision. Everybody is going to be screaming for a third fight. It remains to be seen, but I think we’re going to have a great show,” said Lederman.

I don’t think there’s going to be a knockout in the Ward-Kovalev II rematch, because much of the fight is likely going to take place on the inside. Ward isn’t a big puncher on the inside or the outside. Kovalev showed last time that he’s unable to land with a lot of power in close. Kovalev doesn’t appear to be trained well enough to fight on the inside. Some Eastern European fighters are really good on the inside. Artur Beterbiev is excellent at fighting on the inside. Ward would need to come up with a different strategy for him to be able to compete with Beterbiev in close, because he wouldn’t get away with all the wrestling that he did against Kovalev.

Beterbiev is a different animal altogether. He’s not going to play that if Ward chooses to grapple with him. Unfortunately, I don’t see Ward ever fighting Beterbiev. I see steering around the Beterbiev fight until he retires from boxing. As far as Kovalev goes, he needs to try his best to fight as well as he can on the inside, because that’s where the fight is going to be taking place. I’m not counting on the referee doing his job to stop Ward from holding. I think it’s going to be another fight where Kovalev will needs to try his best to get the better of Ward in close.

If Kovalev is unable to do that, then he end up losing again. Kovlev did an admirable job of nullifying Ward on the inside. For a fighter who wasn’t trained on the inside, Kovalev was excellent defensively in stopping Ward from throwing his shots in close. Where Kovalev didn’t do a good job was him failing to throw shots on the inside to make Ward not want to fight him in close.