By Radio Rahim
Former two-division world champion Paulie Malignaggi expects the Andre Ward (31-0, 15KOs) vs. Sergey Kovalev (31-1-1, 26KOs) rematch to be another close fight.
Last Saturday night at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Ward won a close twelve round unanimous decision over Kovalev to capture the WBO, IBF, WBA light heavyweight world titles. The three official judges scored the fight 114-113.
Malignaggi was sitting ringside, as part of the UK broadcast team for Sky Sports.
While the majority of the ringside observers had scored the fight in favor of Kovalev, Malignaggi agreed with the scores rendered by the Las Vegas judges.
There is an immediate rematch clause and Kovalev is exercising that option.
Longtime boxing analyst Larry Merchant saw Kovalev as the clear winner, but also feels confident that a rematch will not look any different from the first encounter. Malignaggi, while disagreeing on the outcome, believes their styles will always make for a close fight with hard to score rounds.
"I think the fight could go either way every time these guys get in the ring with each other. It was close, I had Ward winning. There were a couple of rounds in the middle that I was giving to Andre where I said 'you know, this round could also go the other way.' There were situations where you could have the fight scored the other way. It was a close fight and I think the rematch will also be close," Malignaggi told BoxingScene.com.
There were complaints from Kovalev's promoter, Kathy Duva of Main Events, that referee Robert Byrd allowed Ward to excessively hold without getting involved or deducting points.
"I think the referee doesn't do anything anyway. I felt that Robert Byrd let them work it out. I felt that he broke them when he needed to. But through my years of professional boxing I've noticed that referees don't get involved to begin with, so you can't expect the referee to get involved when you need to and then not get involved at other times," Malignaggi said.
"If the referee gets involved, then these people start complaining on how he's not letting them fight. When he doesn't get involved these people complain on how he should get involved. I felt it was fine. I felt Byrd did a fine job and it was always going to be this kind of fight to a degree."
