A clear warning to Anthony Joshua, don`t fight in the USA!!

That's one of the few examples that people still put up in defense of US judging. The one time they got it right, all those years ago.

Put that against all the controversial decisions or downright robberies before and after that.
This constant denial is what makes it so much worse. No it happens in the UK, European mainland, Asia and South America, but not over here in the US!
Wake up! The US has been the worst for as long as can be remembered, with a couple of very bad years in Italy and Germany that pulled the attention to them to act as perfect scapegoats.

 

Dodgy judges are everywhere. Worst I have seen in many years was Solis v McDonnell a few weeks back.

 

He never fought against the US's last great hope before.

You guys can slice it how you want. The rest of the world thinks you screwed Kovalev over. The cards were ridiculously favourable to Ward.

 

AJ might well be 100% KOs for his whole career, wins and losses.

 

I haven't seen the Olympic fights, I will look those up on YouTube. I would say he has improved fight-on-fight. Mistakes he made stylistically against in one fight is tighter in the next. Agree that his jab isn't great as I remember him talking about Gary Cornish's jab being solid as it got through his.

I think a "Punchers Chance" is a little unrealistic though, I don't think Tyson has a chin at all, any semi-solid shot from Joshua would be enough and I can't see Fury not being hit at least once.

Klitschko has a multi fight deal, so it looks like win/lose/draw he will see that contract out

 

From what I've seen from polls and analysts, it's about 75% Kovalev, 25% Ward. Doesn't make it a robbery, just means the judges happened to be in that 25%. The fight was too close to be a robbery.

 

25%! This is the number you're using to defend the decision? You must love that home cooking!

 

Just look at the punch stats, Kovalev was the aggressor, had more power punches, Outlanded Ward, had the most head shots, even dropped Ward,and his punches carried more meaning compared to Wards taps. WARD was back pedaling the whole fight and was only ahead on jabs thrown and the occasional potshot sporadic ineffective counter punch. It is a no brainer who won.

 

This thread could've ended with those 4 words right there.

There are no safe havens where hometown or judging for the money fighter doesn't exist.

 

You're right he's definitely improving in some areas. He showed am improved jab against Breazeale, the counter right hand he stopped Martin with was something you could see him trying to land in the fights before Martin but he was falling short a lot of the time with it, it's something he's worked hard on to add to his arsenal.

I even think his movement has improved a bit in the Breazeale fight with him moving more laterally, especially after throwing the jab. Also based on the Breazeale fight he looks to be trying to add parrying shots as a part of his skill set, where before he just blocked shots on his gloves he's now looking to catch them and counter.

If he does catch Fury with a good shot he would definitely have him in trouble and would likely finish him but he's going to find it hard to find a very defensively minded Fury. Though I think he has a much better chance than Wlad did as he doesn't have the flaws Wlad does in regards to counter punching. Joshua is also more willing to take risks so I think Joshua would be a much harder fight for Fury.

 

You can't discount Ward's work because he doesn't hit as hard. That means that Kovalev actually has to do less work than Ward to win the fight. Both men had very clean, effective shots. Kovalev outworked and outlanded Ward but not consistently enough to win imo. He only out landed Ward by 10 punches according to the stats, most of that came in rounds 1 and 2, which Kovalev won.

You guys keep mentioning that Kovalev dropped Ward like he didn't receive credit for that lol the knockdown has been accounted for. While I do agree the scoring is suspect, I still agree with the result.

I don't really care who won, just showing you that people out there genuinely felt Ward won. The fight was close, IB had it dead even with the knockdown being the difference, and he's great at scoring fights.

 

Those who felt Ward won had an obvious bias, you know Kovalev won when the entire Anti-Russian Western media had Kova winning, the bigoted pro American youtube Boxing channels even had Kovalev winning, as did the Russophobic Telegraph and the Guardian as well as other boxing gurus. How do you lose a fight when you have the advantage in powershots, headshots, total punches landed and one knock down as well as being the aggressor and more effective boxer throughout the fight?Ward was backpedalling the entire fight,pot shotting and throwing sporadic counters that were not as effective as you are making them out to be. Had this fight taken place anywhere else Kovalev would have gotten the victory and we would not be talking about it.

 

I think Ward got the benefit of the doubt from the judges, I've said before, I could see it going either way. Kovalev did not dominate. The fight was way too close to be considered a robbery.

 

The fight was very close, anyone saying on either side that their fighter won convincingly is biased or can't score a fight properly. I had it a draw and you can make an argument of either of them winning by a round or 2 at the most.

Nobody dominated this fight and Ward this time got the nod, you can't say the location had anything to do with the result, I thought the score cards reflected the close nature of the fight. If Ward had won by a much clearer margin then yes you could say it was a poor decision and perhaps some bias was evident for Ward but that's not what happened.

 

To me a robbery is somebody who got screwed over,Kova was screwed over.