To be fair to Kovalev, he will fight other fighters differently.Kovalev had a strategy that he stuck to until the final minute of the fight. That's why he won and it's why he didn't KO Hopkins. He and his trainer worked out a brilliant fight plan based on the understanding that Bernard relies on using angles and slipping punches to avoid initial attacks then uses either dirty tactics to damage and distract his opponents or he lunges with flurries of his own as his opponents are trying to reset. Kovalev controlled the pace and the distance by backing off every time he finished throwing his 2 or 3 initial punches thereby never giving Hopkins the chance to get his mount his own cheating offense. In the past Hopkins relied on fighters anxiety and anxiousness to have them make mistakes. Kovalev and his corner understood that Hopkins skills have diminished to the point that his only chance to score comes from what chances his opponents give him, so they just didn't hive him many chances to profit from. This win showed me that Kovalev can follow a plan when the fighter is following a predictable pattern where he doesn't have an offense and doesn't adapt. It said more about how finished Hopkins is than how good Kovalev is. Kovalev did make a lot of mistakes that other more capable and active fighters would have taken advantage of.
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