Revenge. Why Kovalev will lose to Alvarez again

February 2 at American city A big night of boxing will take place at The Ford Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas, featuring three title fights. Among them is the second fight - Eleider Alvarez. In the first fight, which took place in the summer of 2018, he led on points, but... During the rematch, the WBO light heavyweight championship belt (up to 79.4 kg) will be at stake.

Kovalev - Alvarez: when does the fight start?. The fight will take place early in the morning on Sunday, February 3, European time. Tentatively, the main fight between Kovalev and Alvarez will begin at 08:00 Moscow time.

Kovalev - Alvarez: where to watch the fight. The fight will be broadcast live in Russia on the Match TV and Match Fighter channels, in Ukraine the Inter channel will broadcast the fight, and in the USA you can watch the Alvarez-Kovalev rematch on the ESPN channel. In Britain, Kovalev’s fight will be shown on the BoxNation paid channel. .

Kovalev - Alvarez: bookmaker quotes. The Colombian is a slight favorite in the second fight. The odds for Alvarez's victory are 1.65, while for Kovalev's win it is 2.25, and a draw, as always in boxing, is unlikely (odds 25).

Kovalev - Alvarez: all undercard fights. Kovalev and Alvarez will warm up for two championship fights, as well as a number of fights for secondary belts:

• Richard Commey (Ghana, 27-2) - Isa Chaniev (Russia, 13-1), IBF lightweight title
• Oscar Valdez (Mexico, 24-0) - Carmine Tommason (Italy, 19-0), WBO featherweight title
• Patrick Day (USA, 16-2) - Ismail Iliev (Russia, 11-0), IBF Inter-Conti belt
• Teofimo Lopez (USA, 11-0) - Jesse Magdaleno (USA, 31-2), NABF belt
• Bakhram Murtazaliev (Russia, 14-0) – Alvin Ayala (USA, 29-12), WBC USNBC belt
• Zhanibek Alimkhanuly (Kazakhstan, 4-0) - Steven Martinez (USA, 18-4)
• Enrico Gogokhia (Georgia, 9-0) - Vitor Jones (Brazil, 15-3)
• Jason Sanchez (USA, 13-0) - Daniel Oli (Mexico, 13-6)

Video of the first fight Kovalev - Alvarez

This may be Crusher's last major fight.

Eleider Alvarez (24-0, 12 KOs) - Sergey Kovalev (32-3-1, 28 KOs)
Fight for the WBO light heavyweight title
Approximate start of the battle: Sunday, February 3, 06:30 (Kyiv time)

The first fight between Sergey Kovalev and Eleider Alvarez took place in August last year and ended in an unexpected victory for the Colombian challenger. Despite the fact that the result of the fight won the “Upset of the Year” nomination according to Sport Arena, and the rematch was organized without intermediate fights, the once light heavyweight leader Sergey Kovalev is not the favorite of the second fight. Writes

• Endurance

It’s not that the fight was dictated by the Russian, but his advantage was still felt in the first half of the fight, when the Chelyabinsk resident acted measuredly and calmly. But in the fourth round, Sergei believed that he could stop the Colombian and sharply increased the pace, in vain bombarding his tightly closed opponent. After that, Sergey slowed down, the fight initially leveled off, and in the seventh round it was all over.

Eleider Alvarez and Sergey Kovalev, Getty Images

This was not the first evidence of Kovalev’s not the best physical readiness. The same thing happened with Andre Ward, and even earlier Isaac Chilemba demonstrated it. There are several probable reasons, and they come up with a picture that is not the most rosy for a Russian – the age of the boxer and the difficulty of losing weight. And it will not be possible to radically correct the situation for the same reasons.

• Sports freshness

As a boxer, Alvarez is no better than the Russian, but in this time period that is true. Despite the fact that the Colombian is only a year younger than his opponent (34 versus 35), his advantage is much more serious - he is athletically fresher.

Eleider Alvarez, skysports.com

Firstly, he had significantly fewer fights, and secondly, he did not have difficult, grueling fights that take away the athlete’s health. And if the chin has already begun to lose ground a little, then such a process cannot be rolled back.

• Work on mistakes

As a rule, after painful and disappointing defeats, champions promise to do thorough work on their mistakes and return to the ring even stronger. Sergey Kovalev also made promises like changing gloves and coaches, but this did not give any visible results.

Crusher lost three times and looked for someone to blame three times. In the first fight, “Andre Ward was dragged by the ears by the judges,” in the second, “low blows,” then “the main culprit” was Jackson’s former coach, John David, and Eleider Alvarez was “just lucky.” Surprisingly, the name of the boxer himself was always missing from those to blame, who, as one might think from his comments, simply became a victim of unfair circumstances.

So, after the defeat to Alvarez, changes took place on the coaching bridge of the ex-champion again - James McGirt became the main coach. However, the erroneous approach “I lost concentration for a second, he was just lucky” by default means that the Chelyabinsk resident is not going to make any serious adjustments to his plan.

• Psychology

A few weeks ago, information began to appear in the press that on the eve of the first fight with Alvarez, Sergey Kovalev got into a scandal - the actress and model Jamie Frontz accused him of beating him and now the Russian faces up to 4 years in prison.

You need to be a great professional and psychologically stable person to be able to abstract yourself from life outside the ring and be completely concentrated on work in the gym. Will Sergei succeed under such circumstances?

It seems that after the defeats to Ward, something broke in Sergei. Let him blame everyone and everything for his troubles, but the public cannot be fooled - Crusher has lost his halo of a destroyer, and this is reflected in his actions in the ring. Now he needs to prove that he deserves to return to the top, and this is quite difficult to do when you are sure that you are still there and do not owe anything to anyone.

A rematch between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward took place in Las Vegas on June 18. The American fighter defeated the Russian by technical knockout, which caused a huge scandal and was eventually declared erroneous by the main referee of the fight.

Kovalev started the fight well, but Ward gradually found a favorable distance for himself, began to land more accurate punches and generally control the fight. During the fight, Sergey repeatedly complained to the referee about low blows from Andre. However, one of the most respected referees in world boxing, Tony Weeks, did not respond to these remarks. In the eighth round, Ward was able to land several blows to Kovalev’s body, some of which again landed below the belt. As a result, the referee stopped the fight, recording the American’s victory by technical knockout.

After the fight, 60-year-old Tony Weeks admitted that he made a mistake.

“I watched the replay of the fight and I must admit my mistake - I did not see these low blows,” the fight judge wrote on his Twitter account. - I stopped the fight because Kovalev did not defend himself. If I had seen that these blows landed in the groin, I would not have stopped the fight.”

“Everything was decided by a low blow,” Sergey Kovalev said after the fight. - One blow was low, the other was borderline. I don't understand why the fight was stopped. I could go on with this right now.

The Russian boxer was also supported by Olympic bronze medalist Mikhail Aloyan, who successfully debuted in professional boxing in May.

“I watched the fight live and I can confidently say that the judge was hasty with his decision,” Mikhail Aloyan told Izvestia. - When you work on a fight of this level, you have to be extremely careful. Perhaps Sergey gave a reason for a technical knockout by throwing his hands down, but do not forget that this is professional boxing, not a street fight. There are rules here, and Weeks did not react to Ward's groin strikes. He made a mistake and ruined the rematch. If we talk about the fight, then Sergei did not succeed in everything. But anything could happen in the remaining four rounds. Perhaps Ward would have ended up on the floor and Kovalev would have won. Of course, speculating about what could have been is a thankless task. The fight is over, Sergey, unfortunately, lost to Ward for the second time, and the referee’s admission of his mistake will no longer correct the situation.

According to the former head coach of the Russian men's boxing team Nikolai Khromov, world boxing has long been in need of change.

In my opinion, it is wrong when the referee in the ring is a compatriot of one of the boxers,” Nikolai Khromov noted in a conversation with Izvestia. - This is not entirely ethical, and it should be banned, as in many team sports. Kovalev loses to Ward for the second time. After the first fight, the audience booed the scores of the three judges from the USA; in the second fight, the American Weeks was clearly in a hurry with the technical knockout. I think that this episode should be carefully studied by the panel of judges and draw conclusions regarding the continuation of the career of this referee.

18/06/2017 - 09:13

The fight between Russian light heavyweight boxer Sergei Kovalev and American Andre Ward, which had the status of a rematch, ended in a technical knockout of the Russian. The main goal of this fight was the WBA (Super), IBF, WBO light heavyweight belts. The rematch did not work out for the Russian athlete.

You can find out how this fight took place and the full video of the fight in this article on the website

Kovalev - Ward rematch 06/17/2017: result, full video of the fight

In the eighth round, the 34-year-old Russian received a blow below the belt, which caused him to miss a number of more blows. After this, the referee decided to intervene in the fight and stopped it, awarding the 33-year-old American a victory by technical knockout.

The referee's decision caused a great resonance, since Kovalev was conscious at that time and was ready to continue the fight.

The head of the promotion company "World of Boxing" Andrei Ryabinsky commented on this situation, calling it nothing less than lawlessness.

“Two consecutive blows to Kovalev’s groin and the referee declares a knockout. Without even opening an account! Leftist refereeing again. With refereeing like the Kovalev-Ward fight, boxing simply loses its meaning. This is already nonsense. Once again the whole world sees how Ward is being pulled by the ears to “victory.” Kovalev boxed poorly. Yes. But I'm not talking about him. I'm talking about refereeing. This is some kind of chaos"

The Russian boxer failed to return the WBO, WBA and IBF championship belts

There are exactly two options to discuss what happened. We can talk about the rematch between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward, or we can talk about the judging. Both options are correct. But the trick is that both had a bad outcome for the Russian boxer, who lost by technical knockout in the eighth round of the fight in Las Vegas.

After the November fight between these guys, when the judges eagerly saw Ward’s victory, the rematch was awaited with great impatience. They said, and all that would be put to an end. Once and for all. I don’t know why they ruled out the possibility of a second scandal, but that’s exactly what happened.

Before the second meeting, many words were said. Kovalev was determined not to bring the matter to a judge's decision (which is correct), he was eager to hit Andre in the face (which is even more correct) and did not even seem to succumb to emotions (perfectly correct). From every corner it was heard that justice would triumph, and the date when the world would see this justice firsthand and in the flesh was June 17.

All the power of Russian patriotism at night, Moscow time, was united in Sergei’s boxing gloves, which began to hit the American from the very first round. They hit both in the second and in the third. And then something went out of sync: according to the fans’ feelings, revenge was getting closer, and in the ring Ward began to defend his championship belts.

He defended them rather dirtyly, sometimes according to ghetto principles - as long as they stayed. In this case, the answer should have been purely Chelyabinsk, immediately and tightly. Until this happened, Andre sometimes hit below the belt and generally outplayed Sergei.

Kovalev lost the first meeting due to insufficiently good functional condition, which came to the fore in the second half of the fight. Unfortunately, the same mistake could not be avoided. Once again, his stamina began to fail, and Ward, as luck would have it, adjusted himself even more to his opponent’s work.

Approximately on the verge of Russian expectations and panic, the battle ended. In the equivalent of a duel - in the eighth round. Ward shook Kovalev with a powerful blow and immediately rushed to finish him off, and when Sergey was at the ropes, he once again struck not just below the belt, but precisely in the groin. The referee intervened in what was happening... And stopped the fight, not just without allowing Kovalev to take a breath, but without even counting the knockdown.

Mayhem? Undoubtedly. Judicial scandal? Definitely.

And on this topic we can close, moving on to the above-mentioned first option. It’s much more productive to talk not about a blow to the balls, sorry, but about Kovalev’s mistakes that have not been corrected. And it’s not so much to say to us, although from the outside it seems to be clearer, but from within Sergei’s team and with his direct participation.

For two fights in a row, we can blame everything on the excesses of American judges, thinking that we are right, and leaving everything as it is, thereby not budging. And you can find the reasons why before this very blow there was a specific standing knockdown and again a bad second half of the fight. This will be more useful for further victories, won’t it?

Due to the lack of influence on the judges in Las Vegas, there is only one choice - to take the victory, which has no alternative. This is exactly what Kovalev himself understood, but could not do. Therefore, the question is rather about the system - but not about the one that does not allow you to win by unanimous decisions, but about the one according to which training or specific two fights are conducted.

Because Andre Ward, on June 17 for sure, turned out to be stronger. In some places it was not gentlemanly, but we ourselves just wanted to fight.