The Madrigal Of The Krusher: His Fistic Syncopated Polyphonic Symphony Of Destruction.

I'm clearly very biased towards Sergey Kovalev in regards to his upcoming match against Andre Ward, but instead of the usual bellicosity I spew, I'm going to attempt to actually explain why I think Kovalev not only KO's Ward, but possibly outboxes him in route to said KO. Many parallels can be made with Music and Boxing, both are heavily reliant on a rhythm, and without the rhythm, they will not flow as smoothly as they should. We are all hardwired to have an internalized pattern of movement that we rely upon, think about it, you never think about how to walk... you just do, and usually the same amount of space between steps with little variation, however if an obstacle presents itself to you, you can usually make a quick adjustment, and make a stutter step or a small leap to avoid it. Even though we may make that adjustment it tends to throw us off kilter for a second or two, and then we resume our regular rhythm after we've averted whatever was in our way. But if presented with a larger obstacle, like a hole or an unexpected drop off, sometimes we're incapable of finding our rhythm again and go completely off balance and fall on our ass.

Most but not all Musicians and Boxers function in a similar manner, they have the same rhythm throughout a song or match, which is their styles, most pop artists get stuck in a rut and do the same thing over and over and over, which is usually why they end up being one hit wonders, they never change their rhythm, never attempting anything complex, maybe because they just aren't adept or intelligent enough to figure out how, in essence... they're limited. Boxers function in a similar manner, they have a style that suits them and they are usually incapable of varying their set style all that much because its become a crutch, a habit, their rhythm, their beat... jab, jab, straight right never changes. Sometimes they can tweak something here and there and make subtle improvements, but it usually takes a colossal failure for them to realize what they did wrong the first time to correct it the second go around. These fighters are almost incapable of on the fly improvisation, and they can't wrap their heads around why the repetitive pattern that always worked for them in the past has failed them. It's usually because they've come face to face with a.... dun... dun... dun... Rhythm Breaker.

Andre Ward is a master Rhythm Breaker, while in the ring he studies his opponents timing, their punch selection, their footwork, their head movement, their twitch reflexes, their microexpressions or facial tells, their overall rhythm... and breaks it. He does this with a variety of techniques, obviously he's a counter puncher, so he catches them when they're coming in and yes he headbutts and clinches a lot which greatly contributes to his spoilerific style, but he also times his opponents to perfection, and completely offsets their rhythm usually by simply beating them to the punch, aided immeasurably by his natural speed advatage. He catches them midway through their combination or right before an attempt to set up their combinations, which are usually somewhat predictable, either with a straight right or his left hook catching them totally off guard, therefore momentarily discombobulating them and they have to reset, and the same pattern happens repeatedly. He sometimes follows up his punches by holding, and while in hold he works their body and head with fast little hooks, all the while usually holding their lead arm down, and keeping his head on the side he's holding down. Add to that his immaculate ability to slip, block and parry shots with his excellent head movement, and at times dipping his whole body to the left or right to avoid an incoming shot, and excellent control of range. His opponents are never able to get into a rhythm from the gets go because he's so adept at offsetting it. Therefore their entire gameplan goes out the windows, because most of the time they only have one style to rely upon to begin with.

I'll preface this with... I'm a huge fan of Mikkel Kessler and Carl Froch, not a big Arthur Abraham guy, and not that fond of Chad Dawson. While they all seem like big wins, and they are, they were not altogether hard for Ward to dismantle, because they have a set rhythm that Ward could get the beat of and ruin with the ease.

I'll start with The Cobra, Carl is fairly simplistic in terms of skillset, it's relatively easy to process his tempo, he shoots out 2 or 3 left jabs and swings wildly with his right sometimes its a hook, sometimes its a cross, sometimes its looping, and if that fails, he barrels through your punches and pounds you like a drum to the body causing you to drop your hands which opens up your head for him to finish you. All Ward had to do it neutralize his jab, slip the incoming rights and tie him up when he attempts his bumrushes. Easy as pie. Yet Ward was still gassing in the 12th and Froch had his best round when he realized the only way to beat Ward was to throw out the rule book and swing for the fences, of course it was too little too late to have success with that strategy.

Kessler who he faced before Froch, you would think he'd have a harder time with than anyone else, since Mikkel is technically superior to AA and Carl, yet he made fairly easy work of him as well... but Why? Kessler is brilliant at cutting off the ring, he rarely just follows his opponents around in a circle, but he usually starts slow, and is at times overly cautious, looking for the right moment to let his punches go. And when he finally does the punches he lets fly are fairly predictable, like Froch he jabs 2 or 3 times and then attempts to land the right cross, Ward took full advantage of this early, Kessler who did a great job at walking Ward down, but was as usual somewhat apprehensive early on, was tagged incessantly by Ward's straight right, left hook, jab, upjab and jabs to the body. He never let poor Mikkel establish his rhythm, so it was broken from the get go. He beat him to the punch from start to finish, completely taking Kessler play away, add in the holding and headbutting, Kessler never had a chance.

As far as Abraham goes, he had a little more difficulty figuring Arthur out, because with his high guard up as usual, Arthur's jab was intermittent, and he followed Ward around for the first 3 or 4 rounds, with no distinct patterns to pick up on, a jab here and there and an occasional leaping wild right hook. Ward found his range and figured him out by round 4, beat him to the punch repeatedly, jabbed him to the body, while Abraham followed. Abraham isn't very difficult to outbox, Froch put on a masterclass against him. He doesn't have the hardest style to decode.

Dawson while a good fighter, I never considered him extraordinary, he's pretty basic, he sets up everything with his quick jab and follows it up with a straight left, his speed and southpaw stance gave many more basic fighters issues, but he doesn't have a unique rhythm, so add in the fact that he was drained, through no fault of Ward, Dawson agreed to the terms, so if he was weakened, it was his fault, but it clearly affected his performance. He was slow sluggish and his reflexes were off, and everytime he unfurled his jab it opened him up for a left hook from Ward. He didn't even need to break his rhythm, he was too slow and lethargic and was dominated from start to stoppage.

All of these great opponents have one thing in common, they have an identifiable rhythm, and if you can identify a rhythm you can break it. They are exceptional talents, but their skillsets offer little in the way of innovation and while they can make subtle adjustments here and there, nothing so great that could serve to shift the momentum of the fight in the least.

However of all the amazing opponents Andre Ward faced, his hardest fight to date didn't come at the hands of any of the stellar talents I just mentioned, it was against........yes...wild caveman Sakio Bika.

I had Ward winning the Bika match 115-113 it was the closest to a draw he's ever had, some even scored it a draw. Surely Bika has none of the class and skill and fundamentals of those gifted fighters, so why it that this Neanderthal performed far more impressively than those 4 against the SOG? It's because as great as they are, they all perform like top notch rhythm guitarists, while they are amazing at what they do, its predictable. Whereas Bika performs in the ring like a freestyle improvisational jazz musician, he never follows a linear path, he makes it up as he goes along, busting out syncopated notes and swing notes left and right, he is utter chaos personified. Because he wings it, he has no identifiable rhythm to break. Therefore Ward had an incredibly hard time getting his timing down, what to anticipate and how to deflect it, or what to counter with, occasionally he'd find the rhythm, and Bika would play a sour note that Ward wasn't expecting and catch him off guard again. Ward is damn lucky he made the few adjustments he made otherwise there'd still be a lot of people saying Bika was his Castillo, he'd have never lived it down, it would be seen as a robbery, because Ward would have never lost since the scorecards for that match were clearly filled out ahead of time.

 

Which brings me to......

The Madrigal Of The Krusher
A madrigal is a type of classical composition that was popular in Italy around the time of the Renaissance. They were highly unique, whereas many works of classical music follow a linear pattern gradually building towards a crescendo, a madrigal was usually polyphonic in nature, which means that there were 2 to 8 different singers singing at once and all in different keys and rhythms, they were through-composed, sticking to no pattern, continuously shifting it rhythms from stanza to stanza building unpredictably to its crescendo in a non linear fashion all the while retaining its complexity yet remaining hauntingly beautiful. These pieces could almost be considered early forms of jazz, only far more refined.

Sergey Kovalev fights like a madrigal, you may say to yourself, oh please Kovalev is a come forward plodder who relies heavily on his frightening power, he's nothing special....well you couldn't be more inaccurate in your assessments.

He is far more special a fighter than many of you seem to comprehend, I'll lay out what he does that's so unique and why you might not notice it. His footwork is brilliant in three different ways, 1st he cuts off the ring to perfection, he never follows, he corners and traps, 2nd he controls distance with his footwork beautifully, always bouncing just out of range to avoid an incoming punch, he's always close enough to hit you, but quite often he's out of there before you can hit him, and 3rd he does not need to set his feet to punch you, he uses the shifting technique to set down on his punches while moving forward, which is really hard and few can do. That is incredibly important key to his success as well as Golovkin's. Most fighters no matter how fast they are usually have to stop and plant their feet to get proper leverage on their shots to do damage even someone like Gonzalez or Pacquiao. Kovalev and Golovkin have both perfected the ability to shift and sit down on their punches while walking forward, which one of the main reasons their opponents have difficulty avoiding their punches.

His punch selection is also jazz like, its almost polyphonic, he's two fisted and can vary his punches with both hands and adjust them in midair to still find their target and inflict maximum damage. He's playing a tune on his opponent's head and body with a double barreled assault, and he throws in combination, uppercuts, right hooks, left hooks to the body and head, overhand left, overhand right, upjab, right cross, uppercut to the body, he's mastered almost every punch, and he's throws them with such a loose and fluid style and add in the directional changes it makes it hard for his opponents to estimate the time of arrival or its location of touchdown.

He also punches in a very unique hard to time syncopated style, whereas most fighter follow a standard jab jab cross beat, he offsets the rhythm by changing up the tempo of his punches, he instead punches like this... jab jab (slight pause) cross (slight pause) hook, therefore throwing off the opponent's reaction time causing them to either let down their guard or put up their guard too quickly, which opens up his intended target. Or he varies up the rhythm by doing two or three in a row half beat, and the last full beat, and the next combo half beat, full beat, half beat. Its a very subtle tactic, which thoroughly throws his opponents into tizzies completely confusing them, because they have no clue where the next punch is coming from, how hard it'll be, where to defend, what to leave open, they're in constant fear, which usually ends up overwhelming them and eventually they run right into a punch they never see coming, because its usually masked by a feint or two or three, which he's also brilliant at. And add to that Kovalev is also a skilled counterpuncher after all he almost KO'd BHop with a check right hook, that poor Bernard never saw coming. And he can throw a cross over a jab quite well to boot.



So therefore add in Ward's slight decrease in speed and reaction time due to his added weight, his tendency to fade late into fights, probable heightened cautiousness due to fear of counters, inability to get the unpredictable rhythm and timing down of a constantly adjusting virtuoso at setting an off kilter pace, Kovalev's excellent ability to open up intended targets without his opponents awareness, Ward's questionable chin and the fact than Kovalev might be the hardest P4P puncher in the sport, and Kovalev is literally the walking embodiment of a nightmare opponent for Andre Ward.

He cuts off the ring better than Kessler, he hits harder than Froch and Abraham, he's just as fast if not faster than Dawson, and most importantly, like Sakio Bika his offense has a broken rhythm which is almost impossible for a rhythm breaker to key into.

And if all else fails and Ward is able to figure him out, Kovalev can just walk right through him and bludgeon him from one side of the ring to the other like he did Hopkins in the 12th round.

Kovalev is Ward's journey into the heart of Tenebrae personified.

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Appreciate the compliments N17 Thank you.:thumbsup

 

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Thanks, and yeah it probably will for a round or two, but Kovalev has great reflexes, and hopefully will adjust fairly quickly, similar to how he started bending at the waist to slip Pascal's looping overhand right, it won't be easy but I'm sure Kovalev and JDJ are already formulating a plan on how to neutralize it.

 

Thanks Silencio:goodI hope it wasn't too long.

 

No he doesn't lack skill. I think I did a pretty good job explaining that. He and GGG are both skilled but different, its hard to compare them. But in terms of performing well against tricky styles Kovalev has the better track record.