By Keith Idec
LAS VEGAS – Virgil Hunter is convinced Andre Ward can knock out Sergey Kovalev in their rematch Saturday night.
Russia’s Kovalev is considered the bigger puncher of the two and dropped Ward in the second round of their light heavyweight title fight November 19 at T-Mobile Arena. Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) didn’t appear to hurt Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) during a 12-round fight Ward narrowly won by unanimous decision, but Hunter told a group of reporters Wednesday at Mandalay Bay that he has trained Ward to knock out Kovalev in their second fight.
“[A knockout] is a possibility,” Hunter said. “I’ve only trained Andre to purposefully knock out somebody twice – the first one was Chad [Dawson], the second one was this one. I never trained him to knock anybody out, but those two I did. Only twice have we changed strategy to stop somebody.”
Ward destroyed Dawson, then the lineal light heavyweight champion, in their September 2012 fight in Oakland, California. Dawson moved down to super middleweight for that bout, but hadn’t lost by knockout or technical knockout before Ward dropped him in the third, fourth and 10th rounds on his way to winning by 10th-round TKO.
Dominating Dawson represented the biggest knockout win against an elite-level opponent in Ward’s 12-year pro career. Ward and Hunter apparently learned something from his first fight against Kovalev that makes them think the former champion will be susceptible to a knockout in their rematch at Mandalay Bay Events Center (HBO Pay-Per-View; $64.99 in HD; 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT).
“Me knowing Andre’s mindset and how he approaches things, I told him that we’ll train for a knockout,” Hunter said. “It doesn’t mean it’s going to come, but we’ll train for it. It’ll be quite evident in the fight. He’s going to get hit because you got to get hit to win and get knockouts. He’s been hit by Sergey and he described the punches just as I see the punches on TV – very sharp. Not concussive, but sharp.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.