Mikkel Kessler. IMO he is the most complete boxer in the tourney with a great jab, lateral movement and crushing power with his combinations and one shot power. He also has the best resume (besides Taylor but Taylor has multiple KO losses), so he has went up against more resistance than the others. However Ward is very good with a rare switch hitting ability and I woulden't be really shocked to see him win, I just think this is a bit quick. Like Arreola coming of a decent win over Mccline (debatable) he is taking a massive step up to fight Vitali, after beating the limited Miranda this is a massive step up.
Kessler. That thread earlier on how good Ward looked is a little misleading. his opponent was barely throwing a punch until the last round when he tried to go otu guns blazing. Kessler is just gonna be too much for him.
you're still talking about a guy who hasnt proved himself. but that is what makes the tournament so interesting.
Ward is going to look great with movement and speed up to the 4th round when Kess starts working him out and catches him with some great shots.....Kess wins by stoppage in the 8th round.
call me crazy but i'm picking ward all the way, kessler competition to this point is zero other than his only loss. Ward is faster than joe has punches instead of slaps so ward is my pick.
I actually see all three Europeans knocking out their first-round opponents (at different stages). That doesn't mean the Americans won't be more successful in later rounds, it's just that these particular styles match-ups strike me as panning out that way.
if ward is class and up for this then his speed and movement need to keep kessler on his toes for 12 rounds. if he can do that ward will win the fight. kessler is 2 dimensional but hes a good fighter - and its going to take someone who's more complete to take that away from him. EDIT : if ward can't, kessler's going to grind him into the ground.
I have been pretty much picking Kessler to win this whole time, but he looked slow as hell in the Perdomo fight. I think Kessler from the Andrade fight beats everyone in this tourney, but he looks a lot worse than that to me now. Ward looked sharp, Kessler looked sluggish. If Ward slows down i could see Kessler catching him, but if he maintains workrate like in the miranda fight, this one just got a whole lot more difficult to call for me.
True, but Ward hasn't polished his conventional skill-set to quite the same sheen through 20 fights as Calzaghe had on his spoiler style in his 44th pro fight.
Obviously Pudwill's offense wasn't too much of a concern so that fight wasn't a good barometer, but Ward would need to be a lot more elusive than I think we've seen him to avoid the hard, accurate punches of a rustless Kessler psyched up for the big stage. I'm not saying he can't, but he'll need to be a 168 lb Willie Pep to avoid getting KTFO, IMO. If he can limit his diet to a forkful of jabs per round and keep turning Kessler, he'll have a chance to win some rounds. However, twelve is a lot of rounds to keep up that kind of movement...and while Andre has been that deep before it's never been with someone as well-conditioned - or heavy handed.. (and please nobody say Miranda) as Kessler.