Would the first clash between Ward and Kov have had fairer judging if they had fought in Russia?

It would have been in the sense that judges wouldn't be on Ward's payroll. To win that fight Ward needed to win the 10th round. He won the 10th round on all 3 judges. It was an obvious round for Kovalev.

This decision was the product of blatant corruption.

 

Stop listening to Spud

 

Can’t really answer a question like this for a matchup that happened but now with a hypothetical location and unknown set of circumstances. Would the crowd be louder for punches Kovalev didn’t actually land clean? Would Ward be intimidated by the atmosphere? Change the location and the fight could change as well.

But if it comes down to whether or not you think it was a corrupt decision & whether it would have been fairer in Russia then the location doesn’t change whether or not the judges were corrupt does it...

 

It was corrupt. How does Ward win the 10th round on every card?

 

kov i think inches it by 1 point SD in russia, but a rematch would be Wards by KO, sadly.

 

No, they'd have been on Kovalev's.

 

Yeah I think it was an awful decision. so what I’m saying is whether it was down to the judges being bribed or their own incompetence it doesn’t change the way they would have judged it depending on the country, they would still be either incompetent or bribed.

 

It's possible, that yes, the judging would have been better in Russia. While I'm sure that Russia can produce some crappy scorecards, no robberies of particularly extravagant magnitude come to mind. Wlad went to Russia and won a lopsided victory over the local golden boy Povetkin, for instance. If the place was dodgy we would have gotten some Reid / Ottke type occurrences. In fact, I think Wlad was allowed to get away with far too much against Povetkin.

 

Agree. Kovalev was robbed against Ward in the first.

 

You seem to be biased against potatoes!

 

Totally. Russian judging seems much fairer than in the US and UK, contrary to the propaganda and perception. The Kovalev-Yarde scorecards were fair.

 

If the second fight was in Russia Ward would have been DQed for low blows.

 

My dad lost a tenner to me on a wager that they were gonna rob Usyk against Gassiev