By Keith Idec
After watching their fight on television screens, Sergey Kovalev and his trainer, John David Jackson, feel the same way they did in the immediate aftermath of Kovalev’s controversial loss to Andre Ward.
They can’t see any way Ward won more than four rounds in their 12-round light heavyweight title fight November 19 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
“I watched it only one time, the fight,” Kovalev said during a conference call Tuesday. “I don’t know [what] they counted, but it’s not my job. I saw that I won the fight, eight rounds of 12. But I don’t care. It doesn’t matter what happened. To me, the most important thing is what will happen June 17th.”
Russia’s Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) will try to win back the IBF, WBA and WBO 175-pound championships from Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) a week from Saturday night at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas (HBO Pay-Per-View).
All three judges – Nevada’s Burt Clements, New York’s John McKaie and Nevada’s Glenn Trowbridge – scored their 12-round fight the same way nearly seven months ago, 114-113 for Ward. That means each judge scored seven of the 12 rounds for Ward and deducted a point for the knockdown Kovalev scored during the second round.
Unofficial CompuBox statistics indicate their fight was every bit as close as the official scores suggested.
CompuBox credited Kovalev with landing 126-of-474 overall punches, just 10 more than Ward (116-of-337). According to CompuBox, Kovalev connected with more power punches (78-of-232 to 61-of-169) and Ward landed more jabs (55-of-168 to 48-of-242).
“I watched it,” Jackson said during the same conference call. “I scored the fight. I had it 9-3 at best for us and 8-4 at worst for us. You know, [Kovalev] won the fight. He dominated the first half of the fight. The second half of the fight, he didn’t dominate it as much as he could have. But Ward didn’t really justify getting the decision. I thought Sergey won the fight, hands down.
“But the judges, why they scored it [as they did], only they know and God knows. We can’t dwell in the past. But whatever Ward did to survive those rounds, it really didn’t merit a victory for him. But he got it and we have to move on and just prepare for the second fight. What I will tell the fans is Sergey proved in the first half of that fight that he can out-box Ward, at Ward’s own game. I always said he could, so it just adds more to what we need to do for the second fight.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.