By Victor Salazar
New York, New York - 50-50 fights in boxing carry a lot of intrigue. How will a fighter deal with a certain style or how will a fighter deal with someone bigger than themselves? How will each boxer adapt in the ring when a problem presents itself?
These are some questions that will come into play when unified light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KO's) defends his titles against Andre Ward (30-0, 15 KO's) on November 19th inside the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on November 19th.
Many pundits posed a lot of the above questions to trainer John David Jackson, who is designing the game plan for Kovalev to utilize.
But trainer Jackson posed some questions of his own to the media.
"Can He deal with the power of a real light heavyweight? Is he going to decide to sit down on his punches to make Sergey respect him?"
Size is another interesting aspect of the fight. Ward is the fighter that is moving up, but Jackson feels too much is being made about the size even though Ward fought in the Olympics at 178 pounds.
"Think about it, Andre Ward won a gold medal at 178," stated Jackson. "He was a light heavyweight coming down in weight to fight at super middleweight as a pro. He's usually the bigger guy in the ring. So now he's facing a guy that's the bigger guy."
The coach feels that adjustments and question have to be answered by both sides, not just his fighter dealing with Ward's inside game and ring IQ.
"Can he keep Sergey off bay and that's the part he has to adjust to? Can he frustrate Sergey with his tie ups and holding? Because that's how he wins, it isn't pretty but its usually a boring one sided affair. He may not have great power but he has other things that offset that, his ring smarts is what offsets his power."
But if there is one thing Jackson's certain of, his fighter landing a good shot and knocking Andre Ward down in the contest.
"Ward's got hit by smaller guys," said the trainer. "You hit a guy with the right shot, it hurts. If Sergey hits him with the right shot, he's going down. Sergey's got rare power so if Sergey lands the right shot like I know he can, he's going down."
