by David P. Greisman

The fight is over. The fighting is not.

Nothing written in this column will change your conclusion, even if the fight itself was inconclusive. It was a fight that was so, so close. And yet those fighting over it are so, so far apart.

There are actually three sides of this debate.

There are those who had Sergey Kovalev beating Andre Ward, who believe there is no other rational conclusion, that anyone who thinks otherwise doesn’t know how to judge a fight and that those who did judge this fight ended up robbing Kovalev of the victory, his undefeated record and his three world titles.

There are those who — like those three official judges — had Ward winning just enough of what were close, close rounds in what was a close, close fight, giving him the slightest of edges on the scorecards in order for him to eke out the victory.

And there are those who, like me, had Kovalev ahead as the final bell rang but can understand how the decision ended up swinging the other way without raising questions of corruption or competence.

This argument isn’t just one of how judges score a fight. It’s about how we do it, too.

Boxing is already a subjective affair. The way we score can depend on our perceptions of fighters going in and of the fight going on. Most rounds are easy to score. There is a clear winner, with one fighter obviously doing better than the other. Sometimes, however, the action is closer.

When I believe one fighter won a round but recognize the margin of victory as being narrow, I mark it as a swing round. At the end of a fight, I look at the swing rounds given to each fighter and note the potential shifts if those particular rounds were reversed. It’s not perfect, since I’m not perfect, but it gives me an indication of what I feel would be an acceptable spectrum of scores.

The official judges on Saturday — John McKaie, Burt Clements and Glenn Trowbridge — had the same final scores but got there in different manners. They agreed unanimously on eight of the 12 rounds.

All three judges gave Round 1 and Round 2 to Kovalev, with a 10-8 score in the second round reflecting the knockdown Kovalev scored on Ward.

Two judges (McKaie and Clements) gave Round 3 to Kovalev. One (Trowbridge) gave it to Ward.

All three judges gave Round 4 to Kovalev.

Two judges (McKaie and Clements) gave Round 5 to Ward. One (Trowbridge) gave it to Kovalev.

Two judges (McKaie and Trowbridge) gave Round 6 to Kovalev. One (Clements) gave it to Ward.

By that halfway point, McKaie and Trowbridge had Kovalev ahead 59-54, or five rounds to one. Clements had Kovalev ahead 58-55, or four rounds to two.

In the second half, the judges almost wholly favored Ward in very close rounds.

All three judges gave Round 7, Round 8 and Round 9 to Ward.

All three judges also gave Round 10 to Ward. That scoring in particular raised the eyebrows of respected BoxingScene.com scribe Cliff Rold.

“There simply isn’t a good case to have Ward winning the 10th,” Rold said on Twitter, soon after the bout ended. He rewatched the fight on Sunday and still had Kovalev winning the 10th. “Ward had moments, but in a relatively high output round, Kovalev landed more and blunted with the jab in the second half,” he said.

All three judges also gave Round 11 to Ward. By that point, going into the final round, McKaie and Trowbridge had the fight even at 104-104, while Clements had Ward ahead 105-103.

Clements gave the 12th to Kovalev. McKaie and Trowbridge gave the 12th to Ward.

Three of my swing rounds were rounds I gave to Kovalev — Round 3, Round 5 and Round 6. I also had Round 12, which I gave to Ward, marked as a swing round.

Those are also the four rounds the three judges disagreed on.

If you go by the official scorecards, Kovalev got the nod from at least one judge in seven different rounds: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 12. If, for the sake of this exercise, you agree with Rold that Kovalev deserved the 10th, then that gives Kovalev eight rounds on the cards.

Winning those eight rounds would’ve given Kovalev a 116-111 win on the scorecards. I had Kovalev winning seven rounds to five, 115-112. But if I swing my 12th from Ward to Kovalev, then that gives me a 116-111 card to Kovalev. However, if we subsequently swing those three rounds I gave to Kovalev and marked as close, then that takes Kovalev from being the 116-111 winner to losing to Ward, 114-113. (On my original 115-112 Kovalev scorecard, you don’t need to give Ward every benefit of the doubt. Rather, two of those three Kovalev swing rounds would make Ward the victor.)

But that’s just me.

Doug Fischer of RingTV.com had it remarkably wide at 117-110 for Kovalev. Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports had it 114-113 for Ward.

Rold had it 115-112 for Kovalev on first viewing, 114-113 for Kovalev on second viewing. He gave Round 3 to Kovalev on his second viewing. I gave it to Kovalev, but the round didn’t have much going on and I marked it as a swing. Switch that to Ward, and there’s a 114-113 Ward victory.

Some people couldn’t even disagree on there being a large number of close rounds. Even then, it’s still feasible in some cases to see Ward the victor.

Lee Wylie of The Fight City didn’t score the fight on first viewing but went back and scored it on his second time around. He had rounds 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10 and 12 for Kovalev, while he saw Ward taking rounds 3, 7, 8, 9 and 11.

“Round 5 could have gone to Ward,” he told me. “I thought the rest were relatively easy to score.”

While we agreed on, say, Round 6 going to Kovalev, I marked that as a swing round on my first viewing. But we can toss that round aside. It’s inconsequential to this exercise. We don’t need to give all my swing rounds to Ward to make this work.

Instead, let’s take Lee’s Round 5 swing round and push his 115-112 Kovalev scorecard to 114-113 Kovalev. Then let’s switch his Round 12, which I and many others saw as belonging to Ward, and then once again we have 114-113 Ward.

Again, nothing written in this column will change your conclusion. I don’t expect it to. But it was both amusing and alarming to see how fervent the arguments became. During the fight, it was obvious that there was plenty of disagreement among us on how to score so many of the rounds. Yet so many people sound so certain that their way is the only possible one.

Statistics aren’t everything. But this is a fight in which Round 3 had Kovalev credited by CompuBox with landing just four punches and Ward landing five. There were only 242 combined punches landed in the entire fight. Kovalev landed 126, or 10.5 per round, while Ward landed 116, or 9.67 per round.

A significant chunk of those landed punches were jabs. Kovalev’s 48 landed jabs amounted to 38 percent of what he landed. Ward’s 55 jabs were 47 percent of what he landed. Kovalev’s 78 landed power punches average out to 6.5 per round. Ward’s 61 power shots come out to about 5 per round.

Of course, there were rounds in which Kovalev outlanded Ward by more, or in which Ward outlanded Kovalev. And not every power shot is made equal. Kovalev has the heavier hands. But not all of Kovalev’s power shots are made the same either.

Boxing is quite the subjective affair.

I don’t care who wins fights. I don’t care who won this one. My hope as a writer is first and foremost for a good story. I also hope to be entertained. I don’t care if my predictions are right. I picked Ward to win. My prediction was far from perfect. I scored the fight for Kovalev. My perspective may be far from perfect as well.

The expectations going into this bout tended to be that one of two extremes would happen — that Kovalev’s power would be too much for Ward, or that Ward’s boxing skills would undo Kovalev. Neither of those occurred.

Kovalev showed the skill that has made his already formidable power even more dangerous, holding his own against a very smart, very difficult boxer. Ward adjusted and limited Kovalev’s opportunities — again, just look at Kovalev’s statistics — but he also was trying to get by on his own limited output and effectiveness.

This was the kind of fight where rounds were decided by a few choice moments, not by what happened over the course of the entire three minutes.

With so little to pick from, some people saw one thing and the rest another. It’s like that optical illusion that once made waves online — the photo of a dress that appeared to some to be black and blue while others were absolutely certain it was gold and white.

The fight is over. The fighting is not. This is boxing, after all. We sustained the same arguments about Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao over the course of the five years that they didn’t fight. We will dig in our heels, insult the opposition and shake our heads that others can’t see the obvious truth.

It matters, and yet it doesn’t. This was not a robbery. This was a debatable decision in a close, tactical fight.

This is why there sometimes are rematch clauses in contracts.

The rematch won’t settle the arguments about who won the first fight. But it will give the fighters a chance to win more clearly. Do that, and the result of the second bout will ensure that the debate over the first one won’t matter anymore.

“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com