Has Andre Ward Earned a Title Fight with Sergey Kovalev?
The WBO, WBA and IBF light heavyweight title defense of Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev is scheduled on November 19th against former Super Middleweight champion Andre “S.O.G” Ward at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, NV, over HBO/PPV. It Seems Ward and his promoter Roc Nation did not show for a press conference. Ward has been known over the years to be difficult to deal with. His 19 month period of inactivity to break away from his promoter is proof of that. Ward fought August 6th so with that behind him why didn’t he make the press conference?
The reason of the no show in the minds Kathy Duva of Main Events who is the promoter for Kovalev’s said “Ward may want the fight in his home city of Oakland, CA.” Of Wards 30 fights he has fought in CA 23 times of which 6 of those bouts were in Oakland. His last 3 fights have been in Oakland since his comeback. Ward has never fought in Las Vegas. Kovalev on the other hand has only fought in Las Vegas twice with one being a title defense. He has defended 3 in Canada trying to get WBC champion Adonis Stevenson to fight him. Then defended 3 in Atlantic City while his most recent in his home country of Russia.
A big question isn’t Ward’s ability but without a title he brings nothing to the table. He left 30 contenders hanging when he stopped fighting and lost his WBA and WBC titles. His boxing style is a winning won for him but not pleasing to the boxing fans or the cable networks. Then there is his personality. I’ve read he’s a Christian. Well, I’m a Christian who has approached him twice at boxing shows he was working before the shows started and the less said the better.
Since winning the WBO title August of 2013 Kovalev has defended it 8 times. Included in those defensives are 4 IBF and WBA defenses when he won those belts defeating Bernard “The Alien” Hopkins. Not an easy fight due to his defensive style that doesn’t make for good fights. Kovalev’s most recent defense was in July against Isaac “Golden Boy” Chilemba from Malawi and living in RSA who like Ward doesn’t make for good fights and neither did this one. Financially it was recently noted Ward is worth $2 million which is not a lot of money after 30 fights.
The No. 1 contender in the WBA is German Dominic Bolsel, 22-0. The Number 1 contender in the WBO is Russian Demitry Bival, 7-0, not beating any name fighters you have to wonder about that ranking. Ward is the No. 1 contender with the IBF. As you can see Kovalev could fight Bolsel or Bival to satisfy the WBA and WBO.
Ward came back in June of last year defeating Paul Smith of the UK. Then this year in March defeated Sullivan Barrera and this month Alexander Brand to win the vacant WBO International title. The last 2 bouts were at 175. He fought at 178 in the amateurs and hasn’t lost in quite some time. Philadelphia’s Dhafir Smith was stopped by Ward and was in camp with him twice thereafter. He was also in camp with Gennady “GGG” Golovkin once. His thoughts were “Ward is a very good thinking boxer and “GGG” hits like a heavyweight. It’s would be a 50-50 fight if they ever fought.”
Now we it comes down to “Has Andre Ward Earned a Title Fight with Sergey Kovalev?” You be the judge.