By Keith Idec

LAS VEGAS – Virgil Hunter realized quickly Saturday night that Sergey Kovalev didn’t want to engage Andre Ward on the inside.

Kovalev typically doesn’t fight inside, but Andre Ward’s trainer wasn’t quite certain how the Russian knockout artist would react once Ward was able clinch and wrestle with him early in their 12-round light heavyweight title fight at T-Mobile Arena. Once Hunter saw how Kovalev dealt with Ward’s inside game, he felt even more confident about Ward winning the fight.

Ward won a highly competitive, foul-filled fight by unanimous decision (114-113 on all three scorecards), despite suffering a second-round knockdown, largely because he eventually was able to force Russia’s Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) to partake in the type of physical, rough fight that favored Ward (31-0, 15 KOs).

“You know, it’s funny,” Hunter said. “When you have this persona, this ‘Krusher’ persona, and we’re willing to engage you on the inside – it’s obvious that they had planned not to fight on the inside. Whenever a fighter grabs you in headlocks, he don’t wanna fight on the inside. And holds and pushes and shoves you back. If he would’ve fought on the inside, and been what he was supposed to be, we would’ve probably seen a different fight.

“But he did not wanna fight on the inside, despite him being supposedly the stronger fighter, the nastier fighter and the bigger puncher. He did not wanna fight on the inside, so I told Dre his jab was gonna be his most effective punch, and then later on we would get the body shots through, and then make sure that they were clean. So [Kovalev] showed that heart and that aggression, but it wasn’t effective aggression after [round] six. He was just throwing, without really [thinking], not setting up anything. He was just throwing, so he started leaving himself open for clean punches. And I think that was the difference.”

Ward wasn’t about to apologize for complicating the biggest fight of his career because it resulted in a gratifying victory. The former super middleweight champion also believes the body work he did throughout the bout served him well when a tiring Kovalev tried to rally late in the fight.

“I was able to do what I wanted to do, which was to dictate mid-range, dictate inside,” Ward said. “Again, I know I sound like a broken record. But these are championship fights, these are a former champion, a current champion fighting each other. The margin is slim. It’s not always gonna be a Picasso type of performance. You have to find those ebbs and flows, those niches, and ride ‘em as long as you can.

“Tonight, I saw he did not wanna be inside. I saw I could slip inside quickly. I was trying to break his hold and then work. And we were very effective with some of those clean body shots in there. And those body shots will drain you. I don’t care who you are. And he just slowly went down. And he tried to make his run I think in the 11th and 12th, you know, he didn’t have the steam he really wanted to have on his punches. … And I think me getting up, and him sensing and feeling that this fighter’s not discouraged also drained him and took some of his confidence.”

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.