There will be bickering, there will be arguing, there will be debates. But the history books will show Andre Ward as the winner over Sergey Kovalev tonight on HBO pay-per-view, by the slimmest of margins: 114-113 on all three judges’ scorecards, keeping his undefeated record and winning the WBA, IBF, and WBO light heavyweight title belts.
Ward (31-0, 15 KO) was dropped in the second round, and had a fairly slow start to the night. But as the fight progressed, he found his footing, found some rhythm, and used a harsh body attack to slow down Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KO), whose early energy wasn’t sustained throughout the night, and really couldn’t have been.
The fight coming down to a debatable decision is really too bad, given the ease with which boxing fans cry “robbery.” Darleys Perez was robbed tonight. Sergey Kovalev lost a close decision. For the record, BLH had it 115-112, seven rounds to five, for Sergey Kovalev, but this one was tough to score, with plenty of rounds that could have gone either way.
“I knew it was a close fight. You never know how judges are going to score it,” Ward told Max Kellerman. He also said he would give Kovalev a rematch, but that he wasn’t going to negotiate a fight right now.
“It’s the wrong decision. I don’t want to say my opinion, there are witnesses here. Everybody saw what happened,” Kovalev said.
Kovalev landed 126 of 474 (27%) of his total punches, including 48 of 242 (20%) of his jabs, and 78 of 232 (34%) of his power punches. Ward landed 116 of 337 (34%) of his total punches, 55 of 168 (33%) on jabs, and 61 of 169 (36%) of his power shots.
How did you score the fight?