By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Andre Ward won’t argue with you if you tell him his fight against Sergey Kovalev was close.
Even if you tell Ward you think he lost by a point or two, the unbeaten IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion will respect your opinion and agree to disagree. You start talking “robbery,” and that’s when Ward will take issue with what you’re saying about his controversial victory over Kovalev on November 19 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
That, Ward will tell you, simply is untrue.
Naturally, that didn’t stop Kovalev and his manager, Egis Klimas, from using the word “robbery” when they were promoting their June 17 rematch this week during press conferences in New York, Oakland and Los Angeles. The 33-year-old Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) is looking forward to producing a more decisive victory when he faces Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) in their 12-round rematch at Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas (HBO Pay-Per-View).
Ward got up from a second-round knockdown and came back to win a unanimous decision against the previously unbeaten Kovalev. All three judges – Reno, Nevada’s Burt Clements, New York’s John McKaie and Las Vegas’ Glenn Trowbridge – scored their 12-round bout by the same margin, 114-113, for Ward.
“Obviously, the first fight was close,” Ward said. “But I don’t feel like I’m out here to prove anything to anybody. You know, I feel like what’s gonna happen is gonna be academic. Of course he’s gonna make adjustments. He’s gonna try to be better than he was the first time. And obviously, my goal is to do it in a more definitive fashion. But like I’ve been saying since the fight happened, there’s nothing in me that’s questioning myself. ‘Did you win?’ It was a close fight that I won. There was no robbery.
“Because even if you talk to somebody who feels like I lost, you can’t get them to say that it was a difference by more than a point or two. So that’s a fight that can go either way. And people can have their opinions, and I’m cool with that. You know, it depends on how you see it. There’s a lot of close rounds, swing rounds, that can go either way. But any talk about a robbery and all that kind of stuff, that’s taking it too far. And furthermore, I’ve always wanted to be in a rematch. I’m a student of the game, so rematches are always cool, especially when there’s some question about the first one. So I’m excited about that part.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
