Kovalev Seeks Rare Chance at Redemption against Alvarez

Four of the most iconic fighters in boxing history had to do it and they did. Joe Louis’ career hinged on it, Sugar Ray Robinson

Published

6 years ago

August 26, 2018

Frank Lotierzo

Four of the most iconic fighters in boxing history had to do it and they did. Joe Louis’ career hinged on it, Sugar Ray Robinson did it against his career rival and so did Muhammad Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard, and that’s exact revenge over the first fighter to beat them. Had Louis not defeated Max Schmeling, had Robinson lost again to Jake LaMotta, had Ali tripped again over Joe Frazier’s left hook and had Leonard not boxed smartly instead of brawling with Roberto Duran in their rematch, their legacies would be entirely diminished and different today for obvious reasons.

Seldom do fighters fail in the rematch against the first fighter to beat them and then get a chance to revitalize their career if they can beat the second man to defeat them. Well, that’s exactly what former two-time light heavyweight title holder Sergey Kovalev 32-3-1 (28) will be confronted with when he meets up again with Eleider Alvarez 24-0 (12). As widely reported, Kovalev will be exercising the clause in his contract that stipulated if he lost to Alvarez when they met on August 4th, he had the right to an immediate rematch. Kovalev-Alvarez II is tentatively scheduled for this coming February.

Kovalev was up on all three judges’ cards (58-56 and 59-55 twice) going into the seventh round when he was dropped three times and stopped at the 2:45 mark, suffering his third career setback to only the second fighter to defeat him. It seems almost a lifetime ago when Kovalev was often listed among the top five pound for pound fighters in boxing heading into his showdown with another pound for pound stalwart, Andre Ward. That was back in November of 2016 and the clash with Ward was seen pretty much by all as a pick’em going in. The bout went the distance and Kovalev lost a somewhat controversial unanimous decision (I had Kovalev winning by a single point) and since then the wheels seem to have come off regarding his career. When they met seven months later Ward was better and adjusted his attack, working Sergey’s body and rough housing him, and in the eyes of many he exposed a fatal flaw in Kovalev, namely that he seems to come unglued when things turn against him and he must fight through adversity.

Ward stopped Kovalev in the eighth round of the rematch with Ward up slightly on two of the cards with the third favoring Kovalev by a point. Instead of disappearing, Kovalev fought five months later and won a regional belt stopping Vyacheslav Shabranskyy in the second round and followed that up four months later stopping Igor Mikhalkin in the seventh round to win the WBO light heavyweight title. In his first defense, he risked his title against Alvarez.

Favored at odds as high as 6/1, Kovalev started slowly but came on starting in the third and had a big fourth that had Eleider covering up in retreat. During the fifth and sixth rounds, in spite of not looking like the killer he was pre-Ward, he seemed to hit his stride and was controlling the fight….however, Alvarez was occasionally beating him to the punch with his accurately placed one-twos. Then in the seventh round Alvarez dropped Kovalev with a big right to the temple over Kovalev’s low left. Kovalev took the mandatory eight-count and was quickly dropped again with a left-hook to the face. Again he beat the count but was on unsteady legs and as soon as he resumed fighting Alvarez cuffed him with a right and short left hook combo that had him down again and the bout was correctly stopped.

Kovalev no doubt rationalizes the loss as just getting caught like so many other fighters of his caliber before him. He’ll no doubt focus on the fact he was winning and that in boxing anyone can get caught, but it isn’t quite that simple. And in Sergey’s case the mental aspect is every bit as much a factor as the physical part.

After realizing by the end of their first fight that Andre Ward wasn’t intimidated by him and then actually being bullied by Ward in the rematch, Kovalev’s mental cloak of invincibility was shattered. We saw that happen with Mike Tyson after Buster Douglas and with Roy Jones after being knocked out by Antonio Tarver in their rematch. In Kovalev’s case, he appeared to be on the right track in his two bouts after his second defeat to Ward, but then again he wasn’t fighting elite opposition.

Against Alvarez he took a few clean shots early but again settled into fighting his fight. But when he couldn’t really put any hurt on Eleider during the fourth and into the fifth round, he seemed to lose a step and whenever Alvarez landed clean, you could see Sergey was trying to shield that he was bothered by it and felt it wasn’t happening by accident or luck. And once he was dropped by the first big right hand you knew he’d never survive. And having experienced that, the mountain will be tougher to scale in the rematch. Gone is the myth he forced on himself after the second Ward clash that it was a quick stoppage and the referee was against him. He knows Alvarez beat him and he can’t lie to himself about it.

What makes his task so monumental this time is the same thing he had to overcome against Ward for their rematch, and that is stylistically Kovalev can only fight one way and he can’t change that and making things worse is that Alvarez knows it. In order to deliver his power, Sergey must dictate the fight, pushing the action forward. Ward used that against him and there’s no doubt Alvarez will too the second time around.

Kovalev’s problem is one that all attackers have when they finally run into an opponent who makes them pay too big a price for their aggression. Sergey’s lack of good head and upper-body movement and refusal to clinch makes him an easy target – couple that with Alvarez’s clearly faster hands and it unfolds with Sergey getting hit too much and too cleanly on the way in. And once he processes that he’ll have to come in more measured, that’s when Alvarez, no longer being under duress, can really sit down on his shots and unload on Kovalev.

Whenever an attacker faces a fighter who makes the price of getting inside too steep, and the attacker can’t change things up, the rematch is usually a rerun of the first encounter. As I often say, all the attacker can do is bring more of what didn’t work the first time. And now Alvarez knows he can change the fight with one shot and Kovalev knows he couldn’t end it when Alvarez was in trouble during the fourth round of their last fight. Also, there’s the question of Kovalev’s discipline and training habits and they may have already taken their toll and depleted him physically at age 35.

Unlike Louis, Robinson, Ali and Leonard, Kovalev lacks stylistic versatility. Alvarez is a better technician than Kovalev, and when the better technician wins the first time, seldom can the perceived puncher adjust and be a different beast in the rematch.

With Kovalev’s confidence eroded and him not being able to adjust to Alvarez’s style, it’s hard to paint a positive scenario for him. If he were to pull it off against an even more confident Alvarez in the rematch, he will have redeemed himself and his career lives on. But if he can’t, his legacy of being one of the more feared fighters of his era will most likely be forgotten….if it hasn’t been already.

Sergey Kovalev is in a tough spot. This is a fight he had no choice but to take. He’s run out of other chances; it’s not worth Kathy Duva’s while to give him any more confidence-builders. His marketability is shot and the only way to restore it is with a solid win over Alvarez.

Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com

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Frank Lotierzo

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Ramon Cardenas Channels Micky Ward and KOs Eduardo Ramirez on ProBox

Published

2 hours ago

April 24, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Ramon-Cardenas-Channels-Micky-Ward-and-KOs-Eduardo-Ramirez-on-ProBox

The Wednesday night bi-monthly series of fights on the ProBox TV platform is the best deal in boxing; the livestream is free with no strings attached! Tonight’s episode was headlined by a super bantamweight match between San Antonio’s Ramon Cardenas and Eduardo Ramirez who brought a caravan of rooters from his hometown in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico.

Cardenas, coached by Joel Diaz, entered the contest ranked #4 by the WBA. He was expected to handle Ramirez with little difficulty, but this was a close, tactical fight through eight frames when lightning struck in the form of a left hook to liver the from Cardenas. Ramirez went down on one knee and wasn’t able to beat the count. It was as if Cardenas summoned the ghost of Micky Ward who had a penchant for terminating fights with the same punch that arrived out of the blue.

The official time was 1:37 of round time. Cardenas improved to 25-1 with his14th win inside the distance. Ramirez, who was stopped in the opening round by Nick “Wrecking” Ball in London in his lone previous fight outside Mexico, falls to 23-3-3.

Co-Feature

In an upset, Tijuana super welterweight Damian Sosa won a split decision over previously undefeated Marques Valle, a local area fighter who was stepping up in class in his first 10-round go. Sosa was the aggressor, repeatedly backing his taller opponent into the ropes where Valle was unable to get good leverage behind his punches.

The 25-year-old Valle, managed by the influential David McWater, was the house fighter. This was his 10^th appearance in this building. He brought a 10-0 (7) record and was hoping to emulate the success of his younger brother Dominic Valle who scored a second-round stoppage of his opponent in this ring two weeks ago, improving to 9-0. But Sosa, who brought a 24-2 record, proved to be a bridge too high.

The judges had it 97-93 and 96-94 for the Tijuana invader and a disgraceful 98-92 for the house fighter.

Also

In a fight whose abrupt ending would be echoed by the main event, 34-year-old SoCal featherweight Ronny Rios, now training in Las Vegas, returned to the ring after a 22-month hiatus and scored a fifth-round stoppage over Nicolas Polanco of the Dominican Republic.

A three-punch combo climaxed by a left hook to the liver took the breath out of Polanco who slumped to his knees and was counted out. A two-time world title challenger, Rios advanced to 34-4 (17 KOs). Polanco, 34, declined to 21-6-1. The official time was 0:54 of round five.

—

The next ProBox show (Wednesday, May 8) will have an international cast with fighters from Kazakhstan, Japan, Mongolia, and the United Kingdom. In the main event, Liverpool’s Robbie Davies Jr will make his U.S. debut against the California-based Kazakh Sergey Lipinets.

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Haney-Garcia Redux with the Focus on Harvey Dock

Published

2 days ago

April 22, 2024

Arne K. Lang

Haney-Garcia-Redux-with-the-Focus-on-Harvey-Dock

Saturday’s skirmish between Ryan Garcia and WBC super lightweight champion Devin Haney was a messy affair, and yet a hugely entertaining fight fused with great drama. In the aftermath, Garcia and Haney were celebrated – the former for fooling all the experts and the latter for his gallant performance in a losing effort – but there were only brickbats for the third man in the ring, referee Harvey Dock.

Devin Haney was plainly ahead heading into the seventh frame when there was a sudden turnabout when Garcia put him on the canvas with his vaunted left hook. Moments later, Dock deducted a point from Garcia for a late punch coming out of a break. The deduction forced a temporary cease-fire that gave Haney a few precious seconds to regain his faculties. Before the round was over, Haney was on the deck twice more but these were ruled slips.

The deduction, which effectively negated the knockdown, struck many as too heavy-handed as Dock hadn’t previously issued a warning for this infraction. Moreover, many thought he could have taken a point away from Haney for excessive clinching. As for Haney’s second and third trips to the canvas in round seven, they struck this reporter – watching at home – as borderline, sufficient to give referee Dock the benefit of the doubt.

In a post-fight interview, Ryan Garcia faulted the referee for denying him the satisfaction of a TKO. “At the end of the day, Harvey Dock, I think he was tripping,” said Garcia. “He could have stopped that fight.”

Those that played the rounds proposition, placing their coin on the “under,” undoubtedly felt the same way.

The internet lit up with comments assailing Dock’s competence and/or his character. Some of the ponderings were whimsical, but they were swamped by the scurrilous screeching of dolts who find a conspiracy under every rock.

Stephen A. Smith, reputedly America’s highest-paid TV sports personality, was among those that felt a need to weigh-in: “This referee is absolutely terrible….Unreal! Horrible officiating,” tweeted Stephen A whose primary area of expertise is basketball.

Harvey Dock

Dock fought as an amateur and had one professional fight, winning a four-round decision over a fellow novice on a show at a non-gaming resort in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania. He says that as an amateur he was merely average, but he was better than that, a New Jersey and regional amateur champion in 1993 and 1994 while a student New Jersey’s Essex County Community College where he majored in journalism.

A passionate fan of Sugar Ray Leonard, he started officiating amateur fights in 1998 and six years later, at age 32, had his first documented action at the professional level, working low-level cards in New Jersey. The top boxing referees, to a far greater extent than the top judges, had long apprenticeships, having worked their way up from the boonies and Dock is no exception.

Per boxrec, Haney vs Garcia was Harvey Dock’s 364^th assignment in the pros and his forty-second world title fight. Some of those title fights were title in name only, they weren’t even main events, but, bit by bit, more lucrative offerings started coming his way.

On May 13, 2023, Dock worked his first fights in Nevada, a 4-rounder and then a 12-rounder on a card at the Cosmopolitan topped by the 140-pound title fight between Rolly Romero and Ismael Barroso. It was the first time that this reporter got to watch Dock in the flesh.

Ironically (in hindsight), the card would be remembered for the actions of a referee, in this case Tony Weeks who handled the main event. Barroso was winning the fight on all three cards when Weeks stepped in and waived it off in the ninth round after Romero cornered Barroso against the ropes and let loose a barrage of punches, none of which landed cleanly. Few “premature stoppages” were ever as garishly, nay ghoulishly, premature.

With all the brickbats raining down on Weeks, I felt a need to tamp down the noise by diverting attention away from Tony Weeks and toward Harvey Dock and took to the TSS Forum to share my thoughts. Referencing the 12-rounder, a robust junior welterweight affair between Batyr Akhmedov and Kenneth Sims Jr, I noted that Dock’s Las Vegas debut went smoothly. He glided effortlessly around the ring, making him inconspicuous, the mark of a good referee. (This post ran on May 15, two days after the fight.)

Folks at the Nevada State Athletic Commission were also paying attention. Dock was back in Las Vegas the following week to referee the lightweight title fight between Devin Haney and Vasyl Lomachenko and before the year was out, he would be tabbed to referee the biggest non-heavyweight fight of the year, the July 29 match in Las Vegas between Terence Crawford and Errol Spence Jr.

The Haney-Garcia fight wasn’t Harvey Dock’s best hour, I’ll concede that, but a closer look at his full body of work informs us that he is an outstanding referee.

—

While the Haney-Garcia bout was in progress, WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman threw everyone a curve ball, tweeting on “X” that Devin Haney would keep his title if he lost the fight. Everyone, including the TV commentators, was under the impression that the title would become vacant in the event that Haney lost.

Sulaiman cited the precedent of Corrales-Castillo II.

FYI: The Corrales-Castillo rematch, originally scheduled for June 3, 2005 and aborted on the day prior when Castillo failed to make weight, finally came off on Oct. 8 of that year, notwithstanding the fact that Castillo failed to make weight once again, scaling three-and-a-half pounds above the lightweight limit. He knocked out Corrales in the fourth round with a left hook that Las Vegas Review-Journal boxing writer Kevin Iole, alluding to the movie “Blazing Saddles,” described as Mongo-esque (translation: the punch would have knocked out a horse). After initially insisting on a rubber match, which had scant chance of happening, WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Mauricio’s late father, ruled that Corrales could keep his title.

Whether or not you agree with Mauricio Sulaiman’s rationale, the timing of his announcement was certainly awkward.

Haney’s mandatory is Spanish southpaw Sandor Martin (42-3, 15 KOs), a cutie best known for his 2021 upset of Mikey Garcia. A bout between Haney and Martin has the earmarks of a dull fight.

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In a Shocker, Ryan Garcia Confounds the Experts and Upsets Devin Haney

Published

4 days ago

April 21, 2024

David A. Avila

In-a-Shocker-Ryan-Garcia-Confounds-the-Experts-and-Upsets-Devin-Haney

Its good to be crazy. Like a fox.

Ryan “KingRy” Garcia knocked down WBC super lightweight titlist Devin Haney three times to remind everyone of his fighting abilities in winning by majority decision on Saturday.

“I just knew what I could do,” Garcia said.

Fans will not forget the lanky kid from Victorville, California now.

Garcia (25-1, 20 KOs) fooled everyone in playing crazy weeks before the fight, then showed shocking power to hand Haney (30-1, 15 KOs) his first loss as a professional at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

Haney’s WBC super lightweight title was not at stake for Garcia because he weighed three pounds over the limit.

After Garcia seemingly acting out of control on social media, Haney’s guard must have slipped in the first round during the first few seconds as Garcia connected with that hellish left hook and Haney, with a look of shock in his eyes, almost went down. He barely survived the first round.

“He caught me with it,” said Haney.

During the next few rounds, Haney proceeded to advance toward Garcia seemingly fully aware of the lethal left hook. He used feints and rights to score with a busier approach as Garcia seemed cocked and ready to counter with a left hook.

In the fourth round it seemed Haney was confident he had regained control of the fight, but every time he opened up with more than a two-punch combination Garcia reminded him whose hands were faster and more dangerous.

Though Garcia seldom jabbed he seemed bent on looking for the right moment to unleash his deadly left hook. And every time the Southern California fighter opened up with a combination he scored and Haney dare not exchange.

A few times Haney smiled as if signifying he escaped.

In the seventh round Haney looked to punish Garcia’s body and instead was met with a three-punch combination included a left hook to the chin and down went Haney slumped on the ground. He managed to beat the count and as soon as Garcia came within reach Haney wrapped his arms around him with a python grip. Despite the warnings by referee Harvey Dock, the fallen fighter would not release and Garcia impatiently fired a weak punch during the break. The referee deducted a point from Garcia though he could have deducted a point from Haney for not obeying his instructions to release his hold. Haney actually went down three times in the round but only one was counted by the referee.

From that point on Haney was very cautious but still looking to win by decision.

Though Garcia kept using a shoulder-roll defense that left his body exposed, he would retaliate with three and four punch combinations that usually Haney could defend against other fighters.. But Garcia’s blazing combinations were too fast to defend.

In the 10^th round Haney looked to attack and was countered by Garcia’s right and a blinding left hook to the chin and another two blows that sent the former undisputed lightweight champion to the floor again.

It didn’t look good for Haney to survive.

Garcia walked into the 11^th round still composed and never out-of-control He dared Haney to exchange and when within striking distance Garcia unleashed another lightning combination and down went Haney again with a defeated look.

Both fighters had fought each other as amateurs six times so there were no surprises between them. But Garcia’s power and speed were superior and that was the difference in a professional fight.

In the final round both were cautious with Garcia’s combination punching proving too dangerous for Haney to open up. Garcia celebrated early as the round ended confident of victory.

After 12 rounds Garcia was seen the victor by majority decision 112-112, 114-110, 115-109.

“You really thought I was crazy,” Garcia told the interviewer and the crowd. “You guys hated on me.”

Other Bouts

Arnold Barboza (30-0) won a curious split decision victory over United Kingdom’s Sean McComb (18-2) in a 10-round super lightweight fight. McComb’s long reach and busy southpaw style gave Barboza trouble. But he managed to win the fight though the crowd was not pleased.

Bektemir Melikuziev (14-1, 10 KOs) defeated France’s Pierre Dibombe (22-1-1) by technical decision after eight rounds due to a cut on his eye from an accidental head butt. It was a very competitive super middleweight fight.

Costa Rica’s David Jimenez (16-1, 11 KOs) outworked John “Scrappy Ramirez (13-1, 9 KOs) in a 12-round scrap to upset the Los Angeles based fighter. After a few close rounds Jimenez simply bullied his way inside and forced Ramirez against the ropes and unloaded his guns.

After 12 rounds two judges saw it 117-111 and 116-114 all for Jimenez.

“I’m a hard-working man from Cartago I come from nothing,” said Jimenez. “My corner told me I had to work inside.”

Charles Conwell (19-0, 14 KOs) stepped on the gas early with vicious body shots and uppercuts and blasted through the resilient Nathaniel Gallimore (22-8-1, 17 KOs) for several rounds. After a brutal fifth and sixth round the referee halted the one-side beating in favor of Conwell who was fighting for the first time under the Golden Boy banner.

Another winner was Sergiy Derevyanchenko (15-5) by decision over Vaughn Alexander (18-11-1) in a super middleweight match.

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