Scorecards at the end of round 10

Listen Shadow, unless you're going to tell me that Kovalev was outlanding Canelo by a sizeable margin in these rounds you gave him, I don't think you have a leg to stand on trying to truthfull convince anyone why the round you go to Kovalev who was retreating and not putting much behind his punches.
The three rounds where I gave Kovalev were the rounds where he actually put a little more effort to his punches in comparison to some of the other rounds which were really dreadful for Kovalev as far as putting weight behind his punches.

 

I noticed you didn't say a word about Canelo's fairly consistent body attack, which tells me you score biased for Kovalev or you just plain ignore body shots.

 

Unforgiven Kovalev was doing more in most rounds but he wasn't exactly landing more. As divac said most of his jabs were hitting the gloves and it was interesting to see just how much Canelo had his gloves up. It turned out to be a pretty smart strategy but he did risk giving away rounds. Where I disagree with divac is that I think Kovalev's jab was effective not as a scoring punch but as a deterrent that affected Canelo's workrate. Canelo did take long breaks between throwing punches and it was out of cautiousness and the fact that if he put those gloves down he risked getting hit with one of those jabs. And while some of those Kovalev jabs were pawing weak jabs some of them were harder too and Kovalev does know how to mix it up with power on jabs. The reason why I gave Kovalev some of those rounds where divac disagrees is I just felt that Kovalev while hitting mostly gloves was affecting Canelo's output a lot just by keeping that jab pumping. See against GGG Canelo was able to slip the jab and get inside but vs Kovalev instead of using the kind of upper body movement he used vs GGG to slip the jab (which scores more points in my book then just standing there with a high guard) he was almost just stalling just standing there absorbing Kovalev's jabs with his gloves. Don't get me wrong I still think it was a smart strategy, but it wasn't the usual Canelo that we saw vs GGG and Jacobs that would be slipping punches and throwing punches more often.

Canelo's output dropped from 622 punches thrown in GGG 2 to 345 punches thrown vs Kovalev. That's a huge drop off any way you slice it. Even in GGG 1 Canelo threw 505 punches. Granted that's with 1 more round and change but still that's a big drop off in punches thrown. But I get divac's points and think his score is very reasonable. This wasn't an easy fight to score, some say it is but it wasn't. I do give Canelo credit for quality punches even when he's outlanded by mostly jabs but I try not to go overboard with it. Vs Kovalev in the rounds that I had Canelo losing he just took too much time between punches for my liking. But he was just being super cautious and waiting for openings to present themselves and against a big punching LHW in his first fight at that weight I don't blame him for that.

 

So you score quantity over quality and put no emphasis on defence?

 

I think it has more to do with the quality of shots that Canelo landed. Like in the rounds that I gave to Kovalev (aside from round 5) Canelo didn't really land any big impactful power shots. He landed some glancing shots, and in round 5 Kovalev landed a good body shot and a combo himself so that series of punches by Kovalev sort of offset that nice hook by Canelo. And it sounds like that's why you gave Kovalev that round too. And there was one round where he landed a body shot but it sort of ricocheted off of Kovalev's belly. Had that landed flush and hard I would have credited it more, it still landed clean but it just sort of grazed Kovalev's body. The impression i had in the rounds that I gave to Kovalev was there wasn't any real big impactful power shots from Canelo. In round 4 though Canelo started really loading up and landed a couple of combos if I recall. So I think my scoring had less to do with the quality of Kovalev's jabs and more to do with how Canelo was able to offset those jabs by landing shots that really swung rounds in his favor.

 

There was virtually no head or waist movements by Canelo because simply there wasn't anything thrown at him to slip or evade.
When a bigger physically stronger fighter is pushing his punches off in a defensive posture, there isn't much of an opening there for Canelo to take any advantage of.
A smaller fighter in height and reach like Canelo cant simply try to force his way and loop punches against a taller fighter backing up, which is why Canelo was systematically biding his time breaking Kovalev down with body shots.
Its those body shots that payed dividends at the end and caused a tiring Kovalev to get caught by those shots a pressing Canelo in the 11th. By that time, Kovalev was weakened enough where Canelo could press harder without risking getting caught himself lunging in while Kovalev was relatively fresh.

I still think you're doing Canelo a disservice holding it against him for not throwing more shots against a defensive Kovalev was to defensive to be hit.
People need to realize that the shorter fighter cant play the pitter patter game because the taller fighter will throw thunder over all that weak stuff. When its being done to the shorter fighter that shorter fighter has no choice but to bide his time and pick his spots which Canelo did intelligently.