By Keith Idec
LAS VEGAS – Andre Ward is pleased with the way referee Robert Byrd officiated his victory over Sergey Kovalev.
Kathy Duva? Not so much.
Kovalev’s promoter is displeased because Byrd allowed their highly competitive light heavyweight title fight to become unusually physical and rough Saturday night at T-Mobile Arena. When they weren’t landing hard jabs and right hands, Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) and Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) spent much of their 36 minutes together clinching, shoving and wrestling one another all over the ring.
Those tactics favored Ward, who won a unanimous decision (114-113 on all three scorecards) to take Kovalev’s IBF, WBA and WBO 175-pound titles.
“I’m extremely disappointed in his officiating,” Duva, chief executive officer for Main Events, said regarding Byrd. “We were happy when he was selected because usually he gets involved. He would just stand there like this [doing nothing], like, ‘What can I do?’ Well, you’re the referee. You’re supposed to do something.”
When a reporter pointed out to Duva that Kovalev could be blamed for initiating some of those unappealing exchanges, she defended her fighter.
“Sergey was fighting back because he had to do something,” Duva said. “The ref wasn’t. What’s he supposed to do, let Ward wrestle him? Of course that’s what he did. He’s stronger, he’s bigger and he was pushing him. The ref wasn’t doing his job.”
Ward, meanwhile, expressed gratitude to Byrd for the veteran referee’s performance in a fight that clearly was difficult to officiate.
“I thought Robert Byrd did a great job,” Ward said. “I mean, it’s a fine line. You can’t, as a referee, let the fight get away from you. But you also have to let the fighters fight. I think he let us work out of some of those exchanges.
“Sometimes he would hit me behind the head, and I’m thinking, ‘Byrd, where you at, man?’ But then I would come back and rake him across the face with a right hand or something. So I’m thinking, ‘OK, he’s letting us work this out.’ So I think he did a great job. In live time, in real time, I think he did a tremendous job tonight.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.