Comments Thread For: Sergey Kovalev Drops, Dominates Chilemba: Waits For Ward

[mathed]

Gave Chilemba rds 3, 4, 5 and 6....Kovalev took the rest and scored a KD
(116-111)......not really that close at all, lol.

[Sun_Tzu]

This fight was in no way close. Chilemba might have got 4 rounds, good work for Kovalev and he needed a guy like this in front of him to prepare for Ward. Im pumped for it and you know both Ward and Kovalev will be on point come fight night.

I know , I know Chilemba is no Ward but he needed a spoiler type guy to see it. I dont know the guy Ward is fighting but hopefully they found a guy who is comparable somewhat to Kovalev.

[SHO_RULEZ]

I expected a shower of boos for Chilemba's introduction, but there was clapping and some cheers. Very appreciative Russian crowd, no wonder Roy loves fighting there .

Very Hopkins-like safety conscious strategy from Chilemba...he was trying to survive and not get knocked out, instead if trying to TAKE the titles from Kovalev. When Chilemba did take a risk, he had nothing. No kind of power to earn respect from or hurt Kovalev.

[Clint650]

For as good as Chilemba is, the fight was a wash. The jab from Kovalev is looking like the best in the business.

Can the Krusher walk down Ward?

[Mr. Philadel]

Krusher clearly won...dudes are trying to make an issue outta the LHW King losing a couple of rounds...it's the Mayweather Rule...Krusher like Floyd has been so dominate that ppl overreact whenever they're confronted with a little feedback lol

Krusher vs Ward is still a 50-50 fight all the way around

[SugarRayCurtain]

all this fight confirmed was that Kovalev can be outboxed and worked inside when you disrupt his range and rhythm
Ward is the best in the world at finding out fighters flaws and no doubt in my mind will beat Kovalev by UD.

[Boxing Logic]

Why this fight is happening?

Same question about Ward-Brand.

You have to ask this? Because Stevenson and Beterbiev ducked him, Ward won't fight him until November at least, and Chilemba is literally the best light heavyweight in the world besides those three and Ward. Man is underrated as ****. Got robbed with Alvarez, got tree trunk arms that guard his head all the way down to his waist with very long forearms, the type of impenetrable guard that allowed Martin Murray to last 11 rounds with GGG, same type of thing, and he has very snappy jabs and left hoks that require zero windup. Like Ward he's no KO artist but also like Ward and Floyd, he has snappy power that you have to respect, even if most shots won't drop you. Some of the haymakers he threw had mean intentions and if Kovalev walked into them, it would have been goodnight. He also has that awkward style with sixth sense type of head movement, a lot like Maurico Herrera, that makes him hard to pin down.

So he's an excellent fighter. It was just the usual biased boxing fans that wanted to drag this down to the Ward-Brand level to make Ward look better. That's how it always works, you have to understand. Most boxing fans in the USA are black so they will always get to set the narratives. That's how fighters like Pacquiao, GGG, and Kovalev, who do everything right and try to fight everyone, become the villains as soon as they can find any narrative to use against them, but fighters like Peter Quillen, Danny Jacobs, and Adonis Stevenson until he gave them no choice but to say **** that dude it's not worth the effort defending him, who duck GGG or Kovalev, get zero criticism.

Once you understand this is how the narratives work in boxing in 2016, you'll be able to look through it and see how things are, and you won't miss out on competitive fights like Kovalev-Chilemba just like you'll know to skip Ward-Brand. Whereas if you don't know how the narratives work, and you fall for it, you might watch Ward-Brand, but skip fights like Kovalev-Chilemba, and end up getting less entertainment for your time.

Now on the criticism end, as underrated as Chilemba was, I didn't like Kovalev's stamina in this fight at all. I was wondering if he was sick while I watched, because his stamina ****** and he kept blowing his nose even more than he normally does, so now that he's saying that's what it was, I'm more inclined to believe him because I was already wondering, and that's definitely a fantastic sign if his stamina was only bad because he was sick.

But, if that excuse is BS, then it's not a good sign at all. We'll find out what's up in November if Ward comes through. I think after tonight he might actually fight Kovalev because he looked vulnerable. So for the health of boxing Kovalev being sick might have saved the whole show!

[Boxing Logic]

Why this fight is happening?

Same question about Ward-Brand.

lost track of how many times kova straight up walked right into a jab from chilemba

Oh isht, he got hit by a jab! I'm surprised he didn't end up in the hospital!

Come on yall. Never seen so many biased fans. You criticize an offensive fighter trying to chase his opponent down and make the fight, get the KO, because every once in awhile the fighter with the advantage of being chased flicks out a jab and the offensive fighter walks into it.

Big deal.

[aboutfkntime]

You have to ask this? Because Stevenson and Beterbiev ducked him, Ward won't fight him until November at least, and Chilemba is literally the best light heavyweight in the world besides those three and Ward. Man is underrated as ****. Got robbed with Alvarez, got tree trunk arms that guard his head all the way down to his waist with very long forearms, the type of impenetrable guard that allowed Martin Murray to last 11 rounds with GGG, same type of thing, and he has very snappy jabs and left hoks that require zero windup. Like Ward he's no KO artist but also like Ward and Floyd, he has snappy power that you have to respect, even if most shots won't drop you. Some of the haymakers he threw had mean intentions and if Kovalev walked into them, it would have been goodnight. He also has that awkward style with sixth sense type of head movement, a lot like Maurico Herrera, that makes him hard to pin down.

So he's an excellent fighter. It was just the usual biased boxing fans that wanted to drag this down to the Ward-Brand level to make Ward look better. That's how it always works, you have to understand. Most boxing fans in the USA are black so they will always get to set the narratives. That's how fighters like Pacquiao, GGG, and Kovalev, who do everything right and try to fight everyone, become the villains as soon as they can find any narrative to use against them, but fighters like Peter Quillen, Danny Jacobs, and Adonis Stevenson until he gave them no choice but to say **** that dude it's not worth the effort defending him, who duck GGG or Kovalev, get zero criticism.

Once you understand this is how the narratives work in boxing in 2016, you'll be able to look through it and see how things are, and you won't miss out on competitive fights like Kovalev-Chilemba just like you'll know to skip Ward-Brand. Whereas if you don't know how the narratives work, and you fall for it, you might watch Ward-Brand, but skip fights like Kovalev-Chilemba, and end up getting less entertainment for your time.

Now on the criticism end, as underrated as Chilemba was, I didn't like Kovalev's stamina in this fight at all. I was wondering if he was sick while I watched, because his stamina ****** and he kept blowing his nose even more than he normally does, so now that he's saying that's what it was, I'm more inclined to believe him because I was already wondering, and that's definitely a fantastic sign if his stamina was only bad because he was sick.

But, if that excuse is BS, then it's not a good sign at all. We'll find out what's up in November if Ward comes through. I think after tonight he might actually fight Kovalev because he looked vulnerable. So for the health of boxing Kovalev being sick might have saved the whole show!

I somewhat agree with your point about Chilemba, and your points about Kovalev to a certain extent.....

Chilemba fought very well.

but then you went ****** with the bold.....

why do that to a good post ?

[Boxing Logic]

I somewhat agree with your point about Chilemba, and your points about Kovalev to a certain extent.....

What about my points about the racial bias many black boxing fans have, and how it skews their perception on fighters and fights? Do you agree with that?

but then you went ****** with the bold.....

why do that to a good post ?

Because Ward ducked Lucian Bute after saying he'd fight him, hasn't fought one single opponent I wanted him to fight since the Super 6, and the Super 6 was itself an overrated situation that is looked back upon with rose colored glasses for a couple reasons. One, boxing fans are so starved for best vs best fights, and for tournaments, that the Super 6 received a ton of hype just for actually being a tournament where the winners fought. We've wanted that so long as boxing fans, like they do in the UFC, that we gave them so much credit just for doing that. And then, it's also hyped because Brits love their boxing, and Carl Froch is British. You see their fighters overhyped constantly. I remember Nathan Cleverley vs Sergey Kovalev was like an even odds fight in the UK, or pretty close. Just insane. So the Brits propped up an extremely slow fighter in Froch, who doesn't even have elite KO power to compensate for being slow, as being great, and then when Ward beat him, we transferred that manufactured hype to Ward.

But when you look back at it, who did he beat? Froch who never really broke through in the US against the elite fighters, and was mostly just a British star beating up British level guys. Arthur Abraham who was old. He'd lost two of three coming into the Ward fight. Mikkel Kessler who was old and had feasted mostly on overrated european fighters.

So that's why I'm always skeptical about Ward. He's supposedly the #1 P4P fighter and yet he's never fought a true A level fighter. He constantly found excuses not to. He wouldn't fight Bute. Then he took years off in the courtroom. Then even though he said he stayed ready in the gym, he wouldn't even fight a smaller fighter, GGG, right away, he wanted 2-3 tuneups first getting paid 2 million per tuneup, to fight a middleweight. Then when it was clear there were no names at 168, because it's been the worst division in boxing for the last 5-8 years, and people wanted him to move up to 175, where he fought in the Olympics, he kept saying he wasn't ready and putting that off, too, even though you could see vs Barrera he's been plenty big for 175 this whole time. He just had easier fights at 168 so he stayed there.

Always the path of least resistance. Always putting things off. Never any risk. Always excuses. Never great fights, never great opponents. He's much more of a gentleman than Mayweather, but when it comes to the boxing, the opponents, and the never taking risks, it always felt like it was the same story to me, and that he was hurting boxing, not adding to it.

Agreeing to fight Kovalev was literally the first time in his career he surprised me and did something to make me think maybe he won't be bad for boxing like Mayweather. So that made me cautiously optimistic, but he still hasn't fought him yet, and based on his track record with everything before, I'm still worried he will drop out. I was before Kovalev-Chilemba anyway. That's why I was sort of joking, but you never know, maybe this will be what causes him to go through with it. Maybe he wasn't sure until he saw this. You just can't be sure with him because before this, it was always avoiding the best fights, asking for tons of tuneups, taking huge holidays from the ring either with injury or court dates and then demanding more tuneups when he comes back.

You don't know what his plan is anymore than I do. The Eubanks acted like they wanted GGG, but in the end, you tell me, did they really? We never know what their intentions are until they step food in the ring. I tend to believe Ward wants the fight, based on what Kathy Duva has said as well, but there were warning signs also. For the longest time after it was leaked that he'd signed a three fight deal to fight Kovalev in November, when people asked him about it, he gave non-answers, and said things like "in the future" he would take him on "when the time is right" or something like that. He gave the same type of answers you would hear Adonis Stevenson give about Kovalev two years ago, or the kind of answers Danny Jacobs gives about GGG now. As boxing fans we are very tuned in to the subtle signs of ducking these days because we see it happen so often. And Ward definitely seemed to be giving off those signs. That's why you probably want to blame Kovalev fans or think they're biased against Ward, but you have to admit he did it to himself. Kovalev and Duva always said they wanted Ward now. He always danced around it. Same dynamic as Kovalev-Stevenson back in the day. So naturally that made us very skeptical.

So to really answer your question, all I can say is that skepticism still survives to this day. Has most of it gone away since apparently the contract is signed and Duva says she's sure Ward wants the fight? Yes, I'm not that skeptical anymore. But I still have a little bit of the skepticism left over, so I joke about it so that just in case Ward does avoid the fight and break my boxing heart, I can take out my righteous frustration on the people who defended him by saying "see???? This is why we were worried about him. This is why we had doubts. You guys always defend these fighters who never seem that eager to fight the big punching, elite guys, and now another one of these fighters has let us down and spoiled a great fight for us from happening."

That's really all it is. But hopefully the fight happens. Now honestly, you're going to say I'm preparing excuses for Kovalev, but this is the God's honest truth, I'm worried he's old now. 33 for a puncher can be pushing it and Kovalev threw 40 punches a round and says he got punched out. Wtf is that? I thought we were seeing #1 vs #2 pound for pound but one guy can't throw 40 punches a round without gassing and that's supposed to be #1 or #2 pound for pound? I hope I'm wrong but that makes it seem like once again, just like May-Pac, they overcooked another good fight, and now we're going to watch Kovalev walk after Ward for 12 rounds standing there doing nothing for 20 seconds at a time between attempts to hit him because his 33 year old arms can't handle frequent combinations anymore without gassing out.

I hope I'm wrong but this is why real boxing fans want the fights NOW, immediately, with these fighters who are already past 30. You never know when they will start to slow down and then the fight is not a superfight anymore. I hope I'm wrong but gassing out with such a low punch output is a bad, bad sign. And they're going to do the same thing with GGG just watch. He already gassed early against Monroe, because he's 34. Murray took him 11 rounds, which is partly because of Murray's guard like I said, but may be more than that. You didn't see GGG go 11 rounds a few years ago. Against Lemieux the jab was amazing but the combos were lacking... so as much as you hate GGG, they might have the makings of Canelo kicking his slow, gassed out ass fall 2017 when he's already 35, so if you think people saying GGG is better than Ward pisses you off now, just imagine how much fun you're going to have when Canelo is listed pound for pound #1 on HBO's list. This is the kind of crap that happens in boxing these days and it's ruining the sport. I was really looking forward to Kovalev-Ward but if Kovalev can't throw more than 400 punches in a fight now without gassing, we're not going to see the fight we wanted to see, period. He'll still have the power to knock Ward out if he catches him with a nice single shot and hurts him, but the number of exchanges will be much lower than we were expecting, and the fight will look a lot more like a LHW Donaire-Rigondeaux than it will a LHW SRL-Hearns.