By Bart Barry-
Saturday brings a rematch of 2016’s most-anticipated match, Andre Ward versus Sergey Kovalev, in Las Vegas, on HBO pay-per-view, and it may be 2017’s most-anticipated rematch, but that’s the most to be said for it. Good as the first fight was it ended in a way that anticipates a predictable result the next time, no matter how many mean sentences the combatants now speak about one another.
As this fight nears interest dwindles. There are various reasons for this – neither guy is particularly likable or charismatic hence neither guy’s vindication feels particularly relevant to any of us – but that’s nothing good promotion should be unable to surmount. Except nothing like good promotion is anywhere near this fight, is it? The HBO “24/7” franchise is hollowed-out from exhaustion; the idea turned 10 years-old a few months ago, making it a three-year idea stretched to thrice its proper duration, and now it sputters leglessly along with cameos from a branding executive and a lawyer and whatever media still shows up for kickoff press conferences.
Remember when folks thought Jay-Z’s Roc Nation would change boxing because Jay-Z was a hustler and boxing had never seen one of those before? Whatever ingredients make a great promotional outfit Roc Nation has none of them.
Here’s Saturday’s promotion thus far:
Ward thinks Ward won. Kovalev thinks Kovalev won. HBO’s unofficial scorer thinks Kovalev won. HBO’s onair hypeman thinks Ward won or maybe Kovalev did but it really doesn’t matter because whoever won is a great fighter which means it really matters a lot or not at all or a whole lot!
By the fifth minute of the first HBO infomercial I started trying to remember who I thought won the first fight and arrived at the conclusion I cared deeply about the match in its first four rounds, when someone might be knocked unconscious, and substantially less with each round that followed. I vaguely recall surprise Harold Lederman’s scorecard was not tilted to Ward and vaguely recall not-disagreeing with it, which makes me think I thought Kovalev won, but that’s no reason to feel enthusiasm for this rematch. More telling: I traveled to Oakland years ago to watch Ward fight Chad Dawson but haven’t seriously considered attendance at either of his fights with Kovalev. This looks like evidence one can disembark the Ward bandwagon without he becomes a Kovalev fan – which I kind of imagine I was, too, a couple years back.
Ward is tired of Kovalev’s smiling-psychopath schtick, and evidently so am I (though I didn’t realize it till the moment I wrote it). It’s a generational thing. I was in highschool when the Cold War ended and in college when it became apparent the Soviet Union had rotted from within way back when I was in grammar school, hence Perestroika, and therefore a pivot to Japan as our new bogeyman was just the thing – business as an another form of warfare, etc. What was obvious to hockey fans even before Glasnost – Soviet athletes were disciplined and conditioned and creative but in no way evil – became increasingly obvious to the rest of my generation, even while our parents remained fixated on Russian nukes and domino theories and satellite states and the like.
Sergey Kovalev’s handlers have capitalized on Americans’ abiding suspicions of Russian malice, and a weak era in boxing history generally, to make of Kovalev a mythical creature many times more malevolent and less crafty than he actually is. According to HBO’s intrepid reporting, though, Satan got fatigued after round 5 of his November match in large part because a biased referee was letting Satan get held and clenched before biased judges stole Satan’s belts and . . . well, they don’t make evil quite like they used to.
Kovalev assures us he will end Ward’s career Saturday, Ward claims there’s nothing frightening about Kovalev, and reality is leaning Wardwards. Kovalev’s best chance of beating Ward happened 10 rounds ago, and every moment since then, to include the rest of their match and the months that preceded their rematch’s signing and their trainingcamps, has made a Kovalev victory less probable. Ward solved Kovalev, and if he didn’t deserve the decision in their first fight he would have had he not been dropped by a threequarter cross, and he won’t be dropped by that punch Saturday. If Kovalev intends to beat Ward he will have to make a messy attrition of it. There’s a good chance Kovalev doesn’t have the constitution or technique for that. More to the point: Kovalev’s promotion of this match is that he will visit an atrocity upon Ward and Ward knows it and fears it, and you can’t talk like that and then pout if judges don’t give you a decision again.
Ward’s wager is on Kovalev’s emotional fragility – the Russian is a frontrunner who folds when things start to feel unjust. Ward likely will begin the fight at distance, a touch disengaged, looking to run Kovalev into an accidental headbutt or two, while exaggeratedly endeavoring to steal rounds in their final 30 seconds. If this drives Kovalev to a paralytic froth of rage Ward will look to stop him in the championship rounds, otherwise Ward will continue adapting and hitting Kovalev’s body in clinches till Kovalev has another inexplicable onset of midfight fatigue. Other scenarios are possible but don’t feel probable.
I’ll take Ward, UD-12, more decisively this time.
Bart Barry can be reached via Twitter @bartbarry
