Quote:
Originally Posted by
Vendettos
Quote:
Originally Posted by
TitoFan
Watched it again, but with the sound off (thanks for the YouTube, Batman).
The robbery is even more obvious than ever.
Ward missed just as much as Kov.
I absolutely HATE Ward's style with a passion. Grappling is Ward's style. To Kov's credit, he was drawn into it, but refused to be pushed around.
Kov was the aggressor all night long. He was the defending champion. How the hell do you lose three belts like that?
It's official.... it was highway robbery, and HBO are accomplices.
Of those four rounds you mention, I see no way anyone can give Ward round 6.
All he did was run backwards and grapple.
The others were closer, but I gave them to the defending champion who was the aggressor (and still gave Ward round 3).
I find it highly ironic that you're banging on about the injustice of the decision and the 'fix' being in because the scorecards were all the same, and in the same breath you bring out the old trope that you have to snatch the title from the champion, as if it's necessary to separate the head of your opponent from his shoulders and then chow down on his grey matter in the middle of the ring just to have a fair chance of eking out a SD on the scorecards. Absolute BULLSHIT. A fight is scored impartially irrespective of circumstance (or should be). Points mean prizes, regardless of whether you like the guy's style or not, or which direction he happens to be travelling in when he scores them. Nowhere in the rules of boxing is it suggested or implied that going backwards loses you points, or that moving forward wins you points, or tips the scales in tight rounds. These ideas are perpetuated by people who are either too lazy to score a fight properly, considering all of the subtle mechanics involved, or simply allow their preference for come forward fighters to cloud their vision of what actually transpired. From everything you've said I would place you in the latter category. It seems that a knockdown and dominant opening to the fight by Kovalev (I say dominant although the difference was really a hard jab in the first round, which one might attribute to natural power and greater size, but let's not even get into that as I'm sure you're already rolling your eyes) has convinced you that he was 'the man' in this fight. So answer me this. If he was the man, why couldn't he hurt him after the second round? How did he go from smothering Ward on the inside with double under hooks and a smart use of his superior size leaning on him, to receiving multiple left uppercuts to his right flank and multiple right hooks to his head and body on the left flank? Was he the man when Ward came inside, landed 4, 5 punches then angled off and landed another sweeping right hand under his left hand, which was still up trying to protect his chin from all those hooks? Was he in control when he was eating jabs to the body every round, consistently, and solid jabs to the chin (not at the end of his range, either, but hard jabs that Ward was stepping in behind before sliding back out as a left hook or right hand was fired back). You talk about Kovalev being the aggressor, you imply that he controlled this fight, but where was the cutting off of the ring that would have indicated real control of his opponent? When did Kovalev ever pin Ward on the ropes and throw 2 or 3 punches and hurt him? At one point Ward moved in a circle around Kovalev with his feet side on at an absolute CANTER and any boxer worth his salt would have stepped to his right and backed him into the ropes, or thrown a quick 1-2 as he passed across his line of sight, or moved forward and thrown a right hook and followed it with his fabled 'reverse 1-2', but he did NONE of those things. Can you not see that control is not so simple as moving forward in a straight line?
Kovalev made the fight
his fight in the first two rounds, but after that Ward slowly but steadily took over. His work was clean and consistent, and Kovalev chasing him around the ring doesn't change that fact. In fact, it supports the idea that Ward won. If Kovalev had cut off the ring, pinned him on the ropes, Jesus, just hurt him with a single flush shot after round 2, put some kind of pressure on him, punched him in the shoulder or the arms, you could argue for Kovalev winning those close rounds. But as it was, Kovalev simply played into wards hands, and did nothing after round 5/6 to stop him working effectively inside or out whilst Ward managed to neutralise his right hand (so much so that at one point Kovalev actually switched stances briefly and launched himself forward as Ward followed him, allowing him to land a nice left hand - more of this could have won Kovalev the fight in my eyes, but this was his only real improvisation) completely, taking away his power and leaving him fumbling around wondering exactly how to beat him. Now moving into the later rounds (9-12) having taken quite a few crisp body shots, jabs and some sharp left hooks, Kovalev slowed down, but more than this, he suffered a mental capitulation that all but sealed Ward's impending victory. You talk about Ward not doing enough to take the champion's title, but he came up a weight, fought a bigger man with a huge advantage in power and reach (which if you know anything about boxing you realise is crucially important since it means it's not only easier for the bigger man to land his shots but those shots will do more damage, whilst the reverse is true for the man coming up), was hurt in round one and two, and STILL got up and outboxed his opponent, taking his greatest strengths (power, stalking and trapping his opponents, usually by disrupting or stunning with the jab first and finishing with the right hand, or reverse jab). He did this with lateral movement, upper body/head movement and simple, fundamental parries. And in those later rounds, Kovalev gave up. You can call bullshit all you want, but I've sparred with enough big men to recognise the look in the eyes when they finally accept the fact they ain't going to hit you, you aren't going to let them fight their fight, they are tired and you do seem twice as fast as when the fight started because you've been making them miss and making them pay, and they're tired and used to rolling people over in the early rounds, and they feel like their body and their mind has completely failed them. Andre didn't do anything Kovalev shouldn't have expected. There has been some speculation that Kovalev doesn't give his trainer the time of day (a man who was trained by George Benton ffs, how can you not stand up and take notice?) and the fact that simply moving to the side or circling around, or moving in low, clinching and working inside was enough to derail and defang Kovalev suggests that this might well be true, because there is no doubt that Jackson knew exactly how Ward would fight and I'm sure he wouldn't have kept it a secret from his fighter, especially since it seems that a win for ward represented not just one but two scalps in this fight, one for the (God)father and one for the son.
The point is, despite all his ineffectual ambling in Ward's general direction, Kovalev did very little to support the argument that he controlled this fight. He allowed himself to be manipulated to the point where his frustration became obvious for anyone with eyes to see, and controlling this fight from round 3 onwards, as well as the more varied and clean work, meant that Ward won the fight. He showed he was the superior fighter on the night, and all of the faux aggression in the world can't change that fact. Having said all that I believe Kovalev could well beat Ward in a rematch, IF he makes the necessary adjustments and is willing to box clever instead of looking dumbfounded and reaching for another right hand. Kovalev is good boxer-puncher but his limitations were glaringly obvious tonight. His inability to adapt was exposed against a fighter 17 years Hopkins' junior, and I can't say I'm surprised. However, with a few tweaks (which could even have been made in the fight) Kovalev could have gotten Ward out of there, but he failed to do this. Ward set the pattern, and Kovalev had no answer. I haven't posted here in a whole but it really irks me that so called boxing fans can be so blind to the reality of their own most cherished sport. By all means say you wanted Kovalev to win, say that you enjoyed his performance more despite the fact he fell short, even say that you feel, on a subjective point of view, that his aggression, however ineffective, constitutes a victory on the scorecards, but please, don't cry robbery just because the guy you didn't want to win completely outfoxed and nullified the big bad wolf and ruined your Saturday night execution.
And one final thing. On the question of protecting fighters' records, let's not forget that Kovalev is undoubtedly the more popular fighter of the two, and the fighter more likely to bring in money on PPVs and arena tickets, so where is the notion that anyone would favour Ward coming in? He's the boring fighter, so it doesn't make sense from a commercial perspective to suggest that the judges would favour him in order to make the TV companies and the fans happy (if you want proof of this just listen to the booing of Ward after the fight, and the cheers for Kovalev which only died down when Kovalev effectively went full Putin and accused American boxing of being *gasp* corrupt to the core).
Anyways, please excuse any typos/grammar, posting this on iphone and cannot be arsed to scroll through it all and edit :p
