His friend, Kevin Durant, and most of the Warriors will be ringside at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, two days after the team's championship parade in Oakland. This time I will not be empty - Ward will be fighting Krusher. Ward and Kovalev (at least until recently on the latter) probably deserve to be ranked ahead of Stevenson based on their competition of late, but the champ is the champ until someone beats him. Referee Tony Weeks stepped into stop it along the ropes as Kovalev was folded in half against them.
"The people who are going to buy our fight are still going to buy it and come out", Ward said.
Recall that the first Ward vs. Kovalev fight occurred on November 19, 2016, in Nevada's T-Mobile Arena.
Unfortunately for both fighters, those outside boxing don't seem terribly interested.
This is how it went in the light heavyweight match-up of arguably the two best men in the sport, who ascended to those spots by facing each other in a close fight past year that Ward won controversially: Kovalev started better. In the third round Kovalev landed the best punch of the fight up until that point a right to the head of Ward. Ward said in pre-fight interviews that he hopes to score a more conclusive win this time around and put to bed any lingering doubts about who is the better fighter.
"Facing great fighters, you've got to raise your game to the next level and I'm thankful we did that tonight".
"Why stop the fight?" he said.
"I couldn't believe it, I could win", Kovalev said.
Kovalev starts off with a big flurry of short body punches.
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This time, however, Ward sought to erase doubts regarding the legitimacy of his first win by intelligently boxing Kovalev before wearing him down with shots to the body. "He didn't hurt me".
They will meet in the main event of an HBO pay-per-view card from Las Vegas on Saturday, in a fight being billed as "The Rematch". Chief among the cleaning agents are Andre Ward and Sergey Kovalev, whose rematch in the early hours tomorrow reminds us what boxing is really all about.
"I don't know, I can't explain it", Kovalev said. "I said Andre was in the best shape of his life and that he was as motivated as he has ever been for a fight in his life".
While Ward will make $6.5 million in the fight, Kovalev has agreed to fight for a percentage of the tickets and pay-per-view money instead of a purse.
There were two questionable blows around the belt line that Kovalev felt were below the belt and he protested.
The first fight wasn't controversial so much as it was razor thin, but the controversy was definitely there. Neither made any effort to touch gloves when given their final instructions, and once the bell rang, they both went after each other. Each round in the duel was as close as they come as Kovalev was largely the aggressor behind his jab while Ward landed scattered blows between constant clinching.
Complaints by Kovalev about another low blow were ignored by referee Weeks and Ward seized upon his pained opponent, uncorking a huge right that left him on unsteady legs. He appeared confident he would do just that, coming into the ring doing a little dance before turning to salute the crowd.
There had already been controversy on the undercard as Guillermo Rigondeaux knocked out Moises Flores right at the end of the first round to retain his WBA world super bantamweight title.
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