Eléyder Álvarez Baytar vs. Sergey Alexandrovich Kovalev II & Óscar Valdez vs. Carmine Tommasone RBR

Look, guys, this wasn't a shutout. It was a clear win for Kovalev, and even stretching as far as possible for Álvarez you still can't salvage a title-retaining draw for him. I agree with the poster (I believe it was @Cafe?) that said 116-112 for Álvarez is the best case scenario for him, but where I think he was overly pandering to some of the pro-Kovalev camp was in saying that in order to reach that 116-112 card you had to be 'doing him favors'.

Kovalev won rounds 4-5 and 8-12 clearly. That is 7 rounds, and thus mathematically makes him the winner no matter what.

The other 5 rounds, though, were by no means cut & dry. The sixth I gave to Kovalev and the seventh to Álvarez but both were EXTREMELY close.

If we are going to chastise anyone for "reaching" to score in the service of a bias, then we cannot ignore people scoring the first three on the spin for Kovalev. Absolutely no way. You could maybe give him the second, but an objective card has it either 30-27 or 29-28 Álvarez heading into the fourth. Kovalev was looking very stiff and hesitant in that opening quarter of the match, and while Álvarez didn't exactly do anything spectacular himself it was during this stretch that he did in fact outwork & out-land Kovalev. (a ratio which over the subsequent nine would become lopsided in the other direction)

You can't give Álvarez more than - at most, truly reaching for him - 5 rounds but you also can't give Kovalev more than - at most, truly reaching for him - 10. So the acceptable range here is from 115-113 to 118-112 Kovalev. A shutout card means incorrectly tabulating a couple (if not more) of clear Álvarez rounds, while a draw has missed at least one (if not more) clear round for Kovalev.

 

That said, kudos to Krusher...it was, from the fourth onward, a terrific performance.

 

In the back half, or taken in sum - yeah, absolutely. I'm seeing a lot of revisionist whitewashing and gilding the lily, though, people acting like he was sprinkling magical pixie dust across the ring from the opening bell. He looked fairly pedestrian until he got himself revved up near the quarter-way mark.