Just re-scored Kovalev vs Ward. 2nd scorecard comparison with 1st card

Also, just so people understand, when I scored the fight the second time and gave more rounds to Ward, that doesn't mean that the rounds weren't close that I newly gave to him and that some people may have given those close rounds to Kovalev. Obviously I gave those rounds to Kovalev the first time I saw the fight.

When I scored the fight the first time, I had three "close" rounds marked on my flexible scorecard (base scorecard with close rounds marked). Those "close" rounds I gave to Kovalev the first time were rounds 3, 8 and 9. But in the second viewing I gave all those close rounds to Ward. That changed my scoring from 117-110 to 114-113 for Kovalev. That's a big change, but it came on mostly close rounds being swung to Ward (except the 9th round, which CompuBox had Ward winning more cleanly).

Rounds 3 and 8, CompuBox had Ward winning by a single punch each. So the rounds were close, but a slight change in how you scored one to three rounds can widely affect the scorecard, even if every round you change is a very, very close round.

I gave Ward more the benefit of the doubt in my second viewing, which was probably fair given how I perceived Ward when watching the fight live.

Still, I understand (obviously, since this is how I scored it the first time around) people having Kovalev by a wide margin. You can get to that if you give more close rounds to Kovalev. Similarly, you can get to a "close Kovalev win/draw/close Ward win" if you go by how I saw the fight the second time around.

My overall point in this thread is that this is not the "super robbery" I initially thought it was. Ward did do more than I thought he did in first seeing the fight. And I say that even with the perspective of my scoring the fight for Kovalev in both of my two viewings.

You have to be willing to look at a fight from all perspectives, not just from the perspective of how you may have originally seen the fight, and not just from the perspective of the person whom you wanted to win the fight.

 

Also, I made an error in my initial post of the thread. I did have Ward winning Round 7 in my initial scorecard, and I erroneously marked that as a "changed round" in my second viewing. I have fixed that error and corrected the statement that I changed 4 rounds in the second viewing to having changed 3 rounds, instead.

 

Thanks man.

I think the range of "acceptable" scoring in this fight, from watching it both times, is between "comfortable Kovalev win (4-7 points) to narrower Ward win (1-3 points)". After watching the fight again, I can see things more from the "Ward side" of the equation than I initially felt when watching the bout. And this reassessment of the fight includes factoring in things like the crowd affecting judges, etc.

You have to be fair and honest in scoring and viewing fights. Or you have no credibility. And you do have to take into account that judges are human beings and can be affected by things like how crowds react and so on.

 

Just to be even clearer, here are the "max" scores I can come up with for each fighter after watching the fight twice.

* Best Kovalev score = 117-110 Kovalev (my first card) === [Kov +7 points]
* Best Ward score = 115-112 Ward (Ward wins rounds 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12) === [Ward +3 points]

This second score is exactly what two of the judges had for the second part of the fight (Ward takes rounds 7-12). People were outraged that two judges gave Kovalev no rounds after the 6th, but after watching the fight a second time I can see how the judges got there, even if I don't think that is the 'correct' scoring.

 

Also, if you would like to compare my scores in this thread to both the official scorecards for the fight and the CompuBox scores you can do that here.

Official scorecards

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CompuBox (with round by round stats)

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