Ward's Suspect Chin Will be His Undoing Against Kovalev

There's zero evidence he was knocked unconscious, the ref stopped the contest, but even in the short clip, Kovalev appears to be rocking to get back up after going down against Atoev, and for the record, Atoev has wins over Beterbiev, Degale and he stopped Bejanaru, who currently competes at Heavyweight. Atoev is a top notch amateur, Kovalev wasn't a very good amateur, and has improved greatly since turning pro.

And he and Beterbiev fought to almost a draw 25:24 in the ams, and he took his power well evidently. And you can't say Beterbiev doesn't have power to stop guys.

 

Yeah he did, he didn't look good at all, it was a far worse showing than Kovalev had against Chilemba, he was apprehensive to punch in combination and taste the power of Brand, who isn't anything close to being a KO artist. And he at times was actually making an effort to stop Brand, but nothing worked.

 

Kovalev tasted the canvas against that very same fighter. And Kovalev was dropped by Caparello as well.

:smoke

 

I respectfully disagree with everything you said, barring the underlined sentence.

:good

 

I don't think he looked slow or slower. But Kovalev definitely has a good chance to stop him.

:smoke

 

Wasn't Tua stopped by Savon with a vicious body shot?

 

I'd say extremely high expectations is one of the legit reasons as to why we see people dissing Kovalev and Ward's respective efforts against Chilemba and Brand.

I thought they both got good work in, and that they both met their objectives.

 

I was being harsh, Ward did his job last night, he beat Brand 120-108, that being said, he was never all that impressive either, and level of opponent must be taken into consideration here. The reality is that Brand would be dominated by Chilemba as well, not to mention, by Vlasov, Lepikhin, Bellew, Ngumbo and Oosthuizen as well, all Chilemba victims.

In picking Chilemba that was a perfect opponent for Kovalev to prepare himself with, Brand forcing Ward to become a pressure fighter walking him down, stylistically didn't do a damn thing to prepare Ward for the Krusher, and his reflexes and speed were a tad bit off.