Ward - Kovalev II

[SWC75]

It's fun to watch two top boxers actually fight each other instead of a couple of over-matched opponents. We got it with Ward- Kovalev I and will get it again this fall with Canelo Alvarez vs. GGG.

I was one of those who felt Kovalev won the first fight. i didn't feel Ward's comeback was enough ot overcome his early lead. But I did thing Ward would win the rematch. I love a fighter who has not just a style but a strategy. Ward and Crawford are the two best at sizing up an opponent during a fight and determined what will and will not work and making successful adjustments. I felt that Ward had figured out Kovalev midway through the first fight and would fight him the same way from the beginning of the second fight and he did.

Harold Lederman was clueless, giving Kovalev ever round because "he was was moving forward and Ward was moving backwards". I've seen dozens of fights where the guy moving forward lost and the guy moving backwards, (actually, both backwards and side to side) won. Mayweather did a lot of that. Wilfred Benitez was the master of it. The one thing Kovalev had going for him it that his volume of punches was greater and he thus landed more. But despite Kovalev's well-earned reputation as a puncher, his punches seemed to have little impact as War was moving away from them or avoiding them completely. His punches may have taken more out of him than Ward because of all the ones he missed.

Ward picked his spots and , as he did in the second half of the first fight, went after Kovalev's body. Some of his shots were borderline but they always caught part of the belt and Kovalev had his shorts pulled up above his navel. Kovalev looked very much the worse for wear by the midway point of the fight and he started claiming he was being hit below the belt and looking for the ref to grant him rest periods. I think that's what ehw as doing when the fight was stopped in the 8th. But the ref sopped the fight instead. Kovalev was angry but I think he was physically done at that point.

Now Ward has a problem: who doe he fight? Adonis Stevenson, who actually holds the lineal LHW title, seems to avoid big confrontations. Ward didn't even mention him. Instead he was taking about Cruiserweights or even heavyweights. (Isn't it about time we had a division in between them?). Maybe he'd like to take on the Canelo Alvarez-GGG winner? Maybe Kovalev could claim he got cheated again and get a third fight. off of what I saw last night, we wouldn't win it.

 

[ssbriefcase]

I'm in the camp of Weeks didn't ding Ward with more low blow punches. I looked at a ton of replays, but still can't seem to get a good angle on the 2 that stopped the fight. I took Ward before the fight in this one. That said, something didn't sit right with me. And the earlier low blow where Kovalev stopped and bent over and Weeks was behind him and didn't see it, so he didn't believe Kovalev, was for sure a low blow imo and should've awarded time. That said, Kovalev was tired and still probably would've lost, but why not just let Ward finish him if that was the case? Then you take yourself out of the equation as the ref. It was a big let down for everyone watching with me.
Yeah, Ward has nowhere to turn at the moment. Him talking about cruiser and all that went in one ear and out the other for me. Stevenson absolutely ducks top opponents, channeling his inner Mayweather.

One little side bit; if you watched Crawford's last fight, at the end when he got interviewed the first thing he did was dedicate the fight to his aunt Bonnie who passed away. I knew Bonnie, as she would hang out with us at our local watering hole. She would always tell us about her nephew in Nebraska who was gonna be this big time boxer. We kind of said cool and let it be. We had no idea it was this "Crawford", lol.