Could Kovalev go .500 against these 12 LHWs of Classic Past?

There are a couple of different scenarios that stop the cases from repeating, but they (and overall career arcs, oddly enough) do rhyme. The primary difference being that eventually Sonny got Floyd, but Kovalev's team could never land him Stevenson (the fight he really needed). That missed opportunity hurts more than losing to Andre at 35 IMO. He performed much better vs Ward in their first fight than Sonny did in the first Ali fight, but it was easy for me to see a few echoes of Clay-Liston in Ward-Kovalev II (though I think Kovalev had more early success).

I still believe Ali-Liston II was rigged, so there's not much of weight to take from that fight for me.

You're right in that this will dog Kovalev for long to come, but like Sonny, I think some time will allow for a more balanced perspective. Seems a tad unfair for this hypothetical thread littered with ATG's to pop up when his stock's at an all-time low.

Go to a bar a few weeks after Liston-Ali II and ask what Sonny's chances were against the prior ATG's, and I can't imagine he'd have been a popular choice lol. It took years for people to warm back up to his career.

 

It's really such an impossible thing to make judgements like this over eras, but for whatever flaws in Kovalev that Ward exposed (and he certainly exposed flaws), Kovalev still confirmed to me, against a top level fighter, that he's as good at controlling range as perhaps anyone I've ever seen. That would go a long way together with that power.

 

He quit and both his trainers said so!

 

Which hard hitting champs, pray tell? I know that the script for a simp can only contain a few lines but this one, no matter how often you repeat it, is still untrue.

 

You sure that you watched the right fight?

 

As more time passes, I think it's going to look better for Kovalev that he was able to have as much success boxing on the outside vs Ward as he was able to at that age: over 20 rounds of boxing, it's not a stretch to say he won 50% or more of them. I thought he took 7 in the first fight. It's just tough to focus on the successes when things implode in as spectacular a fashion as they did in the rematch, and that's what's fresh in everyone's memory.

 

http://nyfights.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/IMG_4145-660x400.jpg

 

Be my guest argue the point!
Here's Marshall giving 10lbs bombing out Freddie Mills.

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Two of the hardest punching lightweights of all time have the following ko ratios.
Ike Williams 40% Lew Jenkins 43%

 

Yep. It was a bit remarkable that he folded like he did, and the whole "foul" controversy (technically, one or two of those punches might be half an inch or so low, hard to say, but still a long way from sensisitive parts and nothing that had any bearing on the fight, not more than Kova's rabbit punches) was a surreal joke, but up until then he did a superb job at controlling range.

 

Yeah?

 

When it's not even clear from a still picture if a punch was low or not, the only thing you know for certain is that the possible infraction had no bearing on the outside.

 

I would have loved to see Kovalev against Marshall. I'm guessing he never heard of this punch called a "jab" Would have been fun.

 

It's clear to me. look at the elbow which is way under the belt and the angle of the forearm. But maybe it's all the figure drawing that I did that makes it pretty obvious it's a punch to the pills.

Kovalev must have been tasting the children he never would have for the next week.

 

I'm pretty unforgiving on fighters who expect the fight environment to adapt to them and not the other way around. Kovalev should've realized well before the ending sequence that low blows weren't going to be punished, and adjusted accordingly. There were multiple other times where a shot strayed low, and he just looked over at the ref (who did nothing). After the second time of that not working in curtailing them, it's on him to adjust. A lousy hand, but you still gotta play what you're dealt.

I had a hard time buying that the scenario of Ward fighting rough/dirty and the ref not stopping him was something Kovalev didn't prepare for, but between what I saw on fight night and heard from JDJ, that's exactly what it looked and sounded like.