I'm sure most people saw Kovalev as the clear winner. It was definitely a bad decision and it came directly after Hooker vs Perez - another terrible, home cooked decision. Two bad decisions on the same card which favoured the hometown fighters? Come on. Three American judges in the most corrupt city in America gave the decision to the American fighter - against a Russian. lol. We shouldn't really be too surprised.
It is a classic boxing myth and cliche, but really it goes back to a time where there were a lot more 10-10 rounds and of course 15 round fights and as we know if it's a draw the champ retains the title. So the rules of boxing state that if it's a draw the champ retains, so in that sense the rules do insist that to be the champ you have to actually beat the champ, not just equal the champ.
Key word in reading this fight right... 'ineffective'. Krusher's work was not always ineffective aggression, which is why the fight was close. But especially in the middle rounds his attacks lacked pose and accuracy and the judges would have scored in favour of Ward's defence during these exchanges. People do know defence gets scored, right?
Well I'm not gonna dig us into a lengthy exchange over this. I see your point, especially over drawn fights, which is a valid observation.
The official judges just scored it the way Roc Nation bribed them to. Anyone else who scored it for Ward is just looking at skin color. If you look at youtube, the black supremacists' channels all have 2-minute videos saying they scored it 114-113 and don't talk about the fight at all. The unbiased channels have long analytical videos detailing how absurd the scoring was, and wondering how on Earth you can find 7 rounds to give to Ward. Unfortunately a lot of racists think they can help their race by supporting hacks like Floyd and Ward. They would never do something useful like organize and protest government corruption though, because that would actually be useful and rational.
Why even bother quoting my post then? We disagree and are unlikely to find common ground. Move on, dude...
Do you deny that home cooked decisions and corrupt officiating exist in boxing? Most people saw Kovalev win the fight. We've seen so many home cooked decisions over the years that by this point official scorecards are worthless. Vegas judges in particular can never be trusted, they have a proven track record.
Ward lost the early rounds and the championship rounds, and there werent enough in the middle to make up for it. I'll give him full credit for those rounds and for showing heart, but there just weren't 7 of them there for him. Doing relatively better than the early rounds doesnt mean he was winning all of them. I gave him the edge in the close rounds and still had Kovalev 7-5.
Home cooking? Lol.... Ward won 7 rounds to 5. You can cry about it as much as you want, still isn't gonna change the result. AND THE NEW
This reminds me of the O.J. verdict. The first one. The judges got it right but a small vocal minority couldn't accept it.
A lot of casual fan's missed the moments of greatness ward displayed in this fight, Its the same ones who think mayweather is boring, Some people just seem to have the inability to see greatness or the x-factor, Its like you get some music execs who have an eye for talent when others can't see it, Some people can't tell a difference in quality from a frozen ready meal or take away to a meal cooked by an amazing chef, a cheap wine from expensive quality wine etc, Audiophiles can tell the difference between a $1000 speaker and a $2000 speaker while some can't tell the difference from a cheap nasty speaker and one that costs 10 times the price. It was a close fight for sure, but ward for me was a $10,000 sound quality system while kovalev was a $1000 system turned up louder but distorted as ****. I'll take the lower volume higher quality system all day long. Some people prefer the other. p.s lolz at my analogy's