The results of tonight’s HBO PPV are in. Andre Ward defied all odds and managed to hurt and stop Sergey Kovalev in the eighth round of their highly anticipated rematch. There will be some discussion and controversy about the finish, however. The undercard fights were plenty strange along the way as well.
I don’t know if Andre Ward (32-0, 16 KOs) and Sergey Kovalev (30-2-1, 26 KOs) lived up to their first fight, but was there ever a more satisfying conclusions this go around. This fight was somewhat ugly, but always tense. Almost all the rounds along the way could have gone to either fighter and it looked like we were on route to another scoring nightmare. Ward had a particularly good fourth, and I thought Kovalev had a good sixth, but the other four rounds were complete toss ups.
Kovalev did appear to be tiring even when he was doing well and things really came to a head in the eighth. First, Andre badly hurt Kovalev with a huge right hand upstairs. The Krusher’s legs were not good, but even worse he was reacting poorly to body shots. There will, however, be a lot of discussion about whether these were low or not. For my money, they were borderline shots that could have been called either way. One was low on the belt line, but Kovalev’s belt line was also notably high.
Either way, Sergey was definitely hurt and collapsing defenseless into the ropes. For what its worth, the HBO team agreed that the shots were fine. If the punches were ruled legal, and they were, then referee Tony Weeks had no choice but to stop this. Sergey Kovalev was not defending himself. He looked straight up beaten down.
Post-fight Kovalev predictably complained about the shots being low. He also denied being hurt, which he clearly was, so it is hard to tell whether they were sincere complaints or not. Ward discussed moving up further in weight. I really hope he does not do this and instead finds a way to get in the ring with Adonis Stevenson to finish unifying the division. That probably won’t happen though.
Regardless of where he goes from here, this was a career defining performance for Andre Ward, one of the increasingly indisputable all time greats of the sport.
To cap a very strange undercard, Guillermo Rigondeaux (18-0, 12 KOs) officially, for now, scored a first round knockout over Mexico’s Moises Flores (25-1, 17 KOs). After a typical Rigondeaux opening round, both fighters continued to throw a split second after the bell. Of course Rigondeaux’s shot was quicker and cleaner. It put Flores out. Some question was raised post-fight with the validity of how badly Flores was actually hurt, but it seemed legitimate to me. Either way, referee Vik Drakulich and the Nevada State Athletic Commission made a bit of a shit show post fight with a long stretch of confusion.
Ultimately they went to the replay, which is the right thing to do, but their conclusion that the replay clearly showed the punch as before the bell was a confusing one. Supposedly they have the same HBO feed, but the Nevada people came up with an indisputably incorrect call. Even more ridiculous, following that ruling the NSAC executive director was first interrogated by and then apologized to by Jim Lampley on behalf of HBO when they realized HBO may have told him the wrong thing to begin with concerning timing and the bell.
Oh, boxing. I think this should be turned into a no contest as Rigondeaux and Flores were doing the same thing at the same time, both punching after the bell, but the commission seemed to intimate at the end of the interview that it may be turned into a disqualification. What a sport.
The second fight of the evening, if we can even call that, pitted rapidly rising prospect and emerging contender Dmitry Bivol (11-0, 9 KOs) against former Kovalev knockout victim Cedric Agnew (29-3, 15 KOs). The non-fight that took place was borderline farcical. Agnew was wobbled almost immediately and thereafter basically decided not to fight. Over the three and a partial rounds, he landed only a couple power shots. Bivol looked confused at moments as he faced an arms up, stationery punching bag, but the blue chip prospect did his best to work with what was there. In the fourth, Agnew didn’t throw any punches for about ninety seconds or so when Bivol connected with a left hook that seemed to cause an eye injury. From there the fight was rightfully stopped before Bivol could do any more damage. We’ve seen enough of Cedric Agnew now.
In the opener, Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) had almost as an easy of a time with Arif Magomedov (18-2, 11 KOs). The fight was very one sided with Arias digging beautifully to the body alongside aggressive right uppercuts consistently doing damage. Magomedov, taking his second one sided loss here, accomplished next to nothing and was hurt by almost everything Arias threw. He finally went down in the fifth from a sequence of right hands. When the Russian rose, his legs were clearly not there and it didn’t take much more for the fight to be stopped.
