Based on what? He beat kovalev and gave him an immediate rematch. How in the hell does this make him ducking or running from anybody else? There is absolutely zero logic behind your assumption, it comes from a place of nothing but ignorance.
what was shown was that ward stands no chance unless he turns it into a wrestling match. he went from being the highly skilled technician (according to his butt kissers) to the bum rushing plodder. i fail to see where he is supposedly some genius.
i think thats kind of true, there was nothing high skilled about ward, he was getting outjabbed. He's tactic was to keep out of range or else wrestle and grapple on the inside and make rounds close. This is a tactic boxers employ when they know they are over matched(Bernard Dunne said it in an interview before ,he called 'robbing rounds' where you make the rounds reasonably close due to making the fight messy and since you are the home fighter you will hopefully get the majority of these sloppy rounds.
I didn't either but after looking back I think he edged it. I was going for Kovalev also. Ward won his rounds more convincingly. Ward won 5 round where every judge had it 10-9. If you really think about it from a statistical standpoint winning 5 rounds unanimously is very hard to lose because if the other fighter is only getting 10-9 in 2 out of the 3 judges it plays out just the way it did. That's the same thing that happened in GGG vs Jacobs. Round by round every judge sees the fight from different angles and differently. The judges agreed on 8 of the 12 rounds. When they agree on that many rounds it means for the most part they are seeing the fight the same. Its not like they know how the other judges are scoring. What are they wearing microphones or something? I personally believe that if there is a robbery, you would see very little agreement between judges.
Props to both guys. We're getting what they and boxing needs. The first match was boxing at the highest level, and these two together will be amazing and I think bring out the best in each other whatever the outcome every time. All the controversy after the first fight was good controversy, because it was the result of the closeness of the match. Kovalev-Ward is now a more intense rivalry, and I think it's becoming an historically special rivalry. I guess Canelo-GGG will have more US mainstream appeal, but everyone who didn't see the first one and is remotely interested in real boxing has to watch this. I scored the first fight live for Ward by a point just like the judges (though some of the official round scoring was strange). On rewatching I thought I was wrong on a round and confidently scored it Kov by a point, and I do think he was the bit better man that night regardless of scoring. However I still think Ward is the slightly better overall boxer, I kept him higher p4p, and I'm picking him again. Ward knows Kovalev now, he won't have to take a couple rounds to figure out Kovalev's distance and his own timing, and he'll be better able to adjust to what Kovalev brings when Kovalev takes control or even hurts him. That's how I'm leaning at this point anyway. I do wonder a little bit if one of Ward's demands was the promotional tagline, haha. He's the one who thinks the other made excuses. And that line lets him set an agenda in pre-fight talk.
Not calling you a hater. I quoted you because I agree with you. I should have liked your post. My bad!
Why is Ward acting like he didn't already know there was supposed to be a rematch? Yes, Ward, this was supposed to happen.
Ward kept timing and snapping Kovalev's head back with the jab. What did Kovalev do? Maybe you just don't understand boxing as much as you think you do.