A triumph of sorts: Ward decisions Kovalev barely or not at all

By Bart Barry-

Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas undefeated American light heavyweight Andre “SOG” Ward decisioned unanimously and narrowly undefeated Russian Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev by three scores of 114-113. Kovalev hurt Ward in round 1, dropped him in round 2 and sent him racing backwards in round 12, but in between Ward may have, conceivably, possibly, theoretically, landed exactly the number of enough punches to prevail on a fair scorecard.

First things first: I picked Andre Ward to win by late TKO. I watched the fight with four other Americans, all of whom picked Ward to win, and the five of us composed three distinct ethnicities. None of us thought Ward won before the decision got read, but one of us, having suffered the card’s preposterous co-main, advised the group to gird itself for a questionable decision in the main. That’s what we got. And we all felt a touch queasy when the judges’ scores were read.

At some point during the match one of HBO’s prissy broadcasters calculated Ward’s margin for error was zero. True as that statement sounded those judges scoring for Ward enjoyed a still narrower margin, didn’t they? If you bulged your jaw and squinted you probably could get a Ward scorecard after 36 minutes but even a moment’s absentmindedness’d’ve skewed it all to hell. But the judges played fair and turned in varying rounds of favoritism, and frankly things ringside are demonstrably different from things triplefiltered by the HBO lens – and our own Norm Frauenheim, more credible than a combination of Nevada judges and Harold Lederman, multiplied by ten, scored it for Ward 114-113 from ringside, so acceptance is appropriate.

Such a wise course’d feel appreciably better, though, were it not for that left hook to the liver Kovalev placed in the final minutes of round 12, the one that dropped Ward’s right elbow and sent him retreating – not feinting, not trapsetting, not resting: retreating – during the moments he was scheduled by friend and foe alike to trade his life for a knockout.

Ward won the benefit of ringside scorekeepers’ doubts by enduring then overcoming more pain and humiliation in the opening six minutes of Saturday’s match than he collected in the whole of yesteryears’ Super Six tournament. In round 1 a Kovalev jab buckled Ward and made him do the eye dance of widenblink widenblink while Kovalev enjoyed the view. In round 2 Ward drove his face in a sawedoff cross that, had Kovalev had time and space to turn it over, likely would’ve stopped the show then and there.

Then the bell rang for round 3 and Krusher seemed to mistake Ward for Bernard Hopkins, deciding he might hurt Ward whenever the impulse struck him and anyway let’s save some feet and force for the championship rounds. From there Ward got better every round and Kovalev did not, and while that still didn’t win Ward the match necessarily it did create objective space enough in scorers’ minds to fill with subjective considerations of patriotism and activity and heroism and such.

The difference in physicality was pronounced as possible; for those of us who recognize the futility of battling interested audio and video elements in pursuit of an accurate home scorecard, for those of us who no longer bother, in other words, with scoring fights on television, there’s a subjective criterion that serves just as well and requires a fraction the effort: Who appears the larger man? In the final 30 seconds of round 2 Kovalev appeared several weightclasses larger than Ward the way a 150-pound man appears several weightclasses larger than a 135-pound eighth grader. However much one cheered Kovalev after the knockdown it was hard not to feel sympathy for Ward – that’s how much bigger and more effective Kovalev appeared. But then.

Recently director Oliver Stone’s series “The Untold History of the United States” landed on Netflix, and whatever it intends to do or fails to do and however much it may tend toward agitprop it succeeds in encouraging Americans raised during the cold war to imagine Soviets and their leaders like decent and selfinterested folks no different from Americans. That sentiment returned to mind again and again during Saturday’s fifth and sixth and seventh rounds; however much the Krusher marketing plan relied on menace, in a pitched confrontation Kovalev was much more athlete than psychopath; butted and tackled and scored against, Kovalev expressed betrayal, not rage – whither fairplay, comrades?

The damage Kovalev did Ward nevertheless shortened SOG’s career while it revealed the American’s profound willfulness, even if things didn’t conclude conclusively as aficionados hoped. The untenable space between Ward’s fights of the last four years coupled with their dismal lack of competitiveness did nothing to prepare Ward for what he saw in Saturday’s opening rounds. Ward did not improvise so much as endure and believe; he used his entire body to offset Kovalev’s physical advantages while investing fully in his corner’s faith Kovalev’s advantages would diminish with time. They did, too, reducing the Russian’s offensiveness while doing nothing to soften his beard; the few times Ward’s punches did more than dissuade or marginally disrupt Kovalev’s rhythm those punches were to various parts of Kovalev’s body and not his head.

There should be a rematch, and for once the party most likely to benefit from such a happening is the entity most empowered to make it happen: HBO. If the network shows continuing backbone with Ward and tells him there’ll be no victory lap till a decisive victory then tells him too to tell his people to go to Showtime and fight Adonis Stevenson if they think that’ll pay better and not come back, there’s a good chance aficionados can have the rematch we deserve. Or we can have another four years of explaining how complicated such things are and see if there’s anybody left to buy the rematch in 2020.

Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry