The fallout and debate from the final fight result and how it was scored continues tonight following Andre Ward’s points win over Sergey Kovalev in Vegas. Lets take a look at the official Kovalev vs Ward scorecard.
Controversy and debate is rampant at the moment following the fight with these reactions from around the boxing world showing as much.
But lets step back from all the heated debate just for a second and take a cold, hard look at the facts of how the official Kovalev vs Ward scorecard was accessed by the three ringside judges:
#KovalevWard official scorecard. pic.twitter.com/wsg6Z4L3Mt
— Boxing Trivia Guy (@BoxingTriviaGuy) November 20, 2016
Lets zoom that in a fraction for a closer inspection:
As you can see, all three judges on the night John Mc Kale, Burt Clements and Glenn Trowbridge all scored the fight the exact same in the end – 114-113 in favor of Andre Ward to give the American a unanimous points victory over Sergey Kovalev.
Based on their overall scoring above, they seem to have favored ever so slightly Ward’s higher accuracy rate from his punches despite the more hurtful punches that were landed in the fight coming from Kovalev.
They scored the opening few rounds in favor of Kovalev who got off to a great start, but then seemed to give the middle and later rounds to Ward for the most part.
Of course there were a few very hard to call rounds in those middle to later rounds, but on the whole it appears from looking at their official Kovalev vs Ward scorecard, that they favored the boxing of Andre Ward.
This is the thing in pro boxing that can often cause massive debate.
As what different judges like can be subjective and although cries of corruption are always rampant following any controversial fight in boxing anywhere in the world, the reality is that it is not corrupt and that scorecards like the above will always be subjective to human interpretation given the nature of the scoring system.
A rematch between the two fighters in 2017 should suffice to give both men an opportunity to put the record straight and give fans a clear cut winner.
