Why The First Kovalev Fight Changed Everything: Andre Ward’s Never Before Told Stories

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2:46the anniversary the nine-year anniversary of my first fight with sergey kovalev november 19th 2016 just passed there's a lot of talk about the actual fight there's a lot of talk about the scoring of the fight but a lot of people don't know how the fight was made so we're gonna going to a little story time and I'm gonna break this down for you I have been in a lawsuit which is publicized for over two years and I'm in position now to sign with Jay-Z and Rock Nation Sports um obviously many many in the world know Jay-Z for being a music mogul but he also loves boxing and he loves sports and he has a sports agency and as he threw his hat into the game I was one of the first and main fighters that he came after.

3:38We struck a deal. We got the deal done. And I had one fight in my hometown to shake off two years of rust against Paul Smith, which was the top contender from the UK. Thought I looked good in that fight. Fans were happy to be back. But after that fight now, now there's talks with HBO. There's talks with my team. There's talks of rock nation to try to set up the biggest and best and most lucrative opportunities for me at that stage in my career. There's a fighter that I've been linked to throughout the years, Gennady Golovkin. This is a fighter who was touted as being a monster. And a lot of what they said about him was true.

4:17He's a guy who coined the phrase Mexican style. and you got to give his team Tom Loeffler K2 promotions and everybody who was behind that credit because it took a fighter who was from the east and they brought him west and they endeared him to a fan base based on his style that's a genius move that they made but as I watched Golovkin and we were also in a 2004 Olympics together he was 165 pounds I was 178 I started hearing his team not only say that he had a fan-friendly style and a Mexican style, but they also started calling out weight classes. Now, I'm not a fighter who really calls out a lot of guys.

5:00I don't think I've ever called out a fighter. Maybe y 'all got a video somewhere of me doing that once or twice, but I don't really think I've ever done that. But what I will do is I'll answer the call if my name or my weight class is a topic of discussion. And that's what I did. You know, So Golovkin's team said we'll fight anybody.

5:21Anybody. That means anybody. From 160 pounds where he was campaigning all the way up to 175 pounds. Well, I think they even said they'd fight somebody at 54 if it was the right matchup. well I wasn't 75 yet but I was definitely 168 and I was a champion at that weight class so I don't do a lot of rah-rah on the internet if I want to make a fight what we did was I had David Iskowitz who was one of the top executives at Roc Nation at the time along with my team Josh Dubin and James Prince sending email quietly that email is dated July 25th, 2015 at 7.10pm to Tom Loeffler. That's probably East Coast time.

6:16And we offered Tom Loeffler the fight with all the considerations for me being a champion. And in the email we say that both fighters can take an interim fight and we both have to win our fight for the mega matchup to be able to happen. This email was sent, like I said, July 25th. I had just come off of my return fight. As I mentioned to Paul Smith, Gennady Golovkin had just fought Willie Monroe Jr. And was three months away from fighting David Lemieux. The fight got turned down in 15 minutes from Tom Loeffler. And he had an explanation about, we have a fight coming up and we have a two-year plan that we're on to fight Canelo and if these guys meaning me and Golovkin are still around at this time then maybe we can talk about it that's fine we can move on the only reason why this topic has been talked about throughout boxing forums and boxing fans since that email was sent and since that fight was turned down is because of the things that team Golovkin keeps saying you got Tom Loeffler saying things like oh that wasn't a marketable fight you can't say that when your next fight was against David Lemieux the next fight after that was against Dominique Wade you can't say that a fight with me and Golovkin is not marketable when the next fighter you fought was Dominique Wade the next fighter you fought after that was Kell Brook so that doesn't line up another narrative is that oh they they sent the offer when they knew we had a fight coming up yeah you had a fight coming up three four months later and you also could take an interim fight before we fought that wasn't a problem so because this fight wasn't gonna happen now we're starting to have conversations with hbo about what's next and hbo wasn't really interested in a lot of fighters at 168 pounds they felt like I had wiped out that division and it was time for a bigger challenge.

8:22And at that time, I sort of agreed with him, but I didn't fully agree with him because I hadn't really thought about going up in weight yet. I wanted to try to make this fight with Gennady Golovkin or somebody else in and around my weight class. And HBO kept putting pressure, kept putting pressure, kept putting pressure. and for many who saw this fight starting to get made and being talked about they thought it was a setup Floyd Mayweather himself came out on the record and said why can't HBO give Andre Ward a fight at 168 it's a setup fight they want to get him knocked off I don't know what HBO's motive was behind offering that fight and really pushing for this fight above any other fight and it's also the Golovkin fight was also a fight that I don't think HBO won I think that the plan was to move him to a fight with Canelo Alvarez in a year or two and that's exactly what happened they wanted to preserve Golovkin because he had built a fan base he had rallied the Mexican fans around Mexican style they liked the way he fought but the only way you can keep fighting like that and ensure that you win is to face the right competition if you want to keep golefkin on track and not mess up the canelo plan that's a year and a half two years away you have to keep fighting the right competition and that's exactly what they did so as i'm getting presented this kovalov situation i too got to put my business hat on the fighter in me says i'll fight anybody but i had been in the game long enough.

10:04I had just come off of a two-year lawsuit that taught me a lot about the boxing game, taught me a lot about the suits, and taught me a lot about the networks and how things move and how things work. I had to think on that for a second because Sergey Kovalev was everything that they said he was. He could box. He was mean. He did not care about anybody. He didn't care about the Bernard Hockers of the world because you had a name. He didn't care about your reputation. He didn't care about any of that. Like he was a real killer in the game. He's a guy that would go in other fighters' backyards, other fighters' home countries, and he would knock them off.

10:43He would clip them. He would knock them out. Sergey Kovalev wasn't winning decisions. Funny enough, one of his only hiccups was against a fighter, Darnell Boone, that I had a hiccup against. Darnell Boone was a sneaky, tough, dangerous fighter from Youngstown, Ohio that people didn't really know of until it was too late. You understood who Darnell Boone was after you fought him. That's the only hiccup that Sergey Kovalev really had on the way up. So he was who they said he was. I had to take some time away from my team, just me and my wife and myself, to process, is this a setup? Are they trying to get me knocked off?

11:26Why don't they want to push this Golovkin fight? and I had to take time to really get myself in the right frame of mind I had to talk to my coach I had to talk to my godfather bird and say man what you think about this moving up seven pounds north is not an easy thing to do now I do walk around at that time probably 183 184 but I'm still facing guys now that are what that's walking around at 200 pounds it's a different ball game and Sergey Kovalev is not an average guy so as tough as fighters say they are and as tough as they actually are you still gotta it's a thinking man's game you gotta think before you go into battle you gotta strategize before you go into battle you gotta you gotta process is this the right time is this the right fighter should i take this opportunity obviously i took the opportunity with sergey kovalev and the fight got made and one of the first headlines that i read was for all andre's hard work all he did was get a date with a monster I didn't like that But it also let me know What many were thinking It also let me know that Many in the boxing world Thought this was the time To finally see me falter And fall A lot of writers A lot of pundits A lot of YouTubers have been waiting a long time To see if this was the night Many believed that The fight with Sergey Kovalev was going to be the night for Andre Ward to finally lose.

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15:27Download the Moto Casino app today. Moto Casino is a social casino. Avoid were prohibited. No purchase necessary. Visit Moto.us for more details. Moto Casino. America's social casino. This is Sarah Spain, and here at iHeart, we have an amazing new podcaster who now also happens to be a top WNBA draft pick. We're talking about A.Z. Fudd, of course. So congrats, A.Z., from all of us here at iHeart and from your friends over at GEICO. We know your life is about to change. New city, new locker room, new home. It's exciting, and it's also a lot. But here's the thing. You're not doing it alone. Of course, you've got your friends, your family, and your teammates, but you've also got all of us here at iHeart Women's Sports.

16:07And you've got GEICO, who will be with you every step of the way. So while you're stepping onto a new home court, know you've already got a full bench and a gecko behind you. Congrats again to AZ Fudd. And if you're not already listening, go check out her podcast, Fudd Around and Find Out on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to podcasts. That training camp leading into the Sergey Kovalev fight, Sergey Kovalev won. It's probably the worst camp that I've ever had. The work was put in. I worked as hard as I possibly could. There was no way I'm going to go up against Sergey Kovalev. and not be in the best possible shape of my life.

16:43A couple things that went wrong in camp and leading into camp. I made a rookie mistake going into camp. I remember I was in Quebec, Canada. I think it was for Sergey Kovalev, Jean Pascal II. They wanted me at the fight. The fight had been talked about. There were rumors going out there, and by me being at the fight, It's going to let the fans know that, okay, this is real. He's watching this fight. He wants to fight Sergey Kovalev next. I can remember getting caught up in the trying to look like I'm a 175-pounder, being overly concerned about looking the part instead of just being the part. Looking the part has never been a part of my game.

17:30I've never tried to look scary. I've never tried to look menacing. I've never tried to look like I'm a big fighter that can bully you. I'm just who I am. And you'll figure this out when the fight starts. I got away from my game. And I started lifting and I started trying to look right. Because I wanted to, truth is, I'm going to keep it real with y 'all. I'm doing push-ups in my room and I'm lifting that weak, not just to get strong, but I want to look. I want, bro, when he sees me, I want him to look. I want to look like 175 pounds. I want to look like a full-fledged 175-pounder. Truth is, I'm not going to look like a 175-pounder because I'm a career middleweight and super middleweight.

18:12It takes time to feel into a weight class. It takes time for your body to adjust where people say, now you look like a 175-pounder. How I fell for that trick at that stage of my career, I don't know. Another thing, I brought in the legendary strength and conditioning coach, Mackie Shieldstone. And Mackie Shieldstone came up with a great plan for preparation. He came up with a great plan to not just put extra mass on my body, but to just get me ready for battle at a heavier weight class. Mackie had been successful with the Michael Spinks of the world, where Michael Spinks went from light heavyweight to heavyweight.

18:51Mackie was successful with my favorite fighter of all time, Roy Jones Jr. here it's a documentary on youtube right now where it details the process that roy jones went through with mackie to build his body up i liked what i saw i saw how mackie transformed roy's body and then i saw how roy performed on fight night i felt like roy kept his speed i felt like roy was big enough i like the physique i like the way his physique looked and i said well if it worked for Roy, it's going to work for me. The problem with that is, is nothing that Mackie did wrong, but my coach verse, he didn't want that. He is not that he had a problem with Mackie.

19:32He wanted a different type of training. Nine and a half times out of 10, I'm going to listen to verse and I'm going to listen to my coach, but I have the final say. And there's times that I got to overrule him. If I feel like I got the better move, this is what we should do. And that's what I did. I brought Mackie in and Mackie's type of training. I liked it. I thought it was good, but I got conflict now with my coach. My body is also betraying me. Back in 2008, tore my ACL, my MCL, PCL, had my meniscus shaved, playing basketball. And when you do something like that, your knee's never really the same.

20:12If I go into camp and I do everything right, I've done my leg work, my hamstring work, my quad, my VMO, all the stuff that's around the knee and everything is working just right. My knee can survive a training camp of sparring, running, Pilates, all the stuff that I did. I didn't do enough going into that camp to make sure that my knee was strong. So every couple of days I'm having a flare up. My knee is looking three times as size as the other knee. I have to take days off now. I'm going to the doctor's office and they're draining my knee, three CCs, four CCs. We're two and a half, three weeks out.

20:49And I'm having discussions with my lawyer Josh Dubin I'm having discussions with Verge I'm having discussions with James Prince and I'm in tears because I'm like man I'm getting ready for the biggest fight of my life against the most dangerous guy and I don't have my weapons and the whole time Verge is in my ear saying baby God didn't bring you this far for nothing he's with you he's got you we're not gonna cancel this fight and I didn't want to cancel the fight Coming off a two-year hiatus in the game, fighting a lawsuit, getting out of that. And now this is the rebirth and the biggest fight of my career in the last two years has to get pushed back and canceled.

21:28So I got the weight of not being 100%, the weight of not knowing if my leg is going to hold up in a 12-round fight, and also the weight of knowing that I can't cancel this fight, but there's a part of me that wants to push it back to give myself time to heal. we kept going back and forth to the doctor's office all the way into like the last seven days, 10 days. And there was a question on, man, should you wear this knee brace? I'm telling the doc, I can't wear the knee brace, the knee brace. I'm a, I'm a little wounded. I can't wear whatever's going to happen is going to happen. I'm getting my knee drained again.

22:01Cause I'm trying to keep the fluid out of my knee so I can be mobile and functional when I'm running, when I'm, when I'm sparring, but I'm still missing days. I look up y 'all and it's, it's fight week. And it's two hours before I head to the arena in my rented house in Las Vegas. And I have Lisa, my physical therapist and Dr. Dillingham, my surgeon at the house, draining my knee again. And I remember just looking at my knee and just looking at them drain my knee and just being a disbelief. I didn't say anything, but I'm thinking like, I can't believe that I'm getting ready to go to this arena and fight that dude.

22:46And I'm getting my knee drained. Normally, everything should be peaking. Everything should be feeling just right going into a big fight like this, but not so. And oftentimes for me, God has challenged me in those kind of ways. It's one thing to speak about your faith But there are times when you're going to have to walk that faith out And this was a time when God was asking me to walk my faith out Because I'm a person that likes to check every box I did this, I did that, I did enough of this, I did that God took my piece of paper Crumbled it and threw it And said now do you trust me? So I couldn't do anything but depend on him Because normally I can depend on him and my training But my training was so-so for this fight.

23:30I had to depend solely on him. I didn't know what was going to happen going into that arena at the T-Mobile Arena on November 19, 2016. We get into the fight, and the first thing that jumped out at me about Sergey Kovalev was not his power. It was his accuracy. It was his timing. and nobody really out times me or out thinks me in a fight, especially early. So the shocker for me was, boom, I'm getting hit and I'm thinking and I'm and he's not allowing me time to think. I'm a thinker. My my my my IQ leads me and I process very quickly. But the punches and the accuracy came a lot quicker than I could process in that moment.

24:17but that had never really happened to me. And I'm processing, I'm thinking, I'm thinking, I'm processing, and we get through the first round. Bird said, baby, you a little tight. You got to loosen up a little bit. So I try to get my rhythm. I start trying to get my feints going. I start trying to get my rhythm, and I make a rookie mistake. I duck down to the left side of Kovalev, to my right side, and I raise back up with my left hand down. and his right hand gets to the target before my right hand. I see a flash. Boom. I look up and I'm on the ground. I'd only heard about situations like that.

24:53Normally a guy gets hurt. He wobbles. He goes down. But it was a flash. Boom. And I looked up and I was on the ground. I start to get up and I hear the crowd. Everybody's cheering. I already know my family is looking crazy. I can't see them, but I know they're looking crazy. I know my people are like, oh my God. but I could see Kovalev give me this look as he's turning away this menacing look as if like you didn't know that this was how this was gonna go this is how the script was written I told you as soon as I hit you the fight is over think about me y 'all is is a couple things that's underestimated and never talked about with me.

25:36I have a great chin. I've been down twice in my whole career and I fought the best of the best. I fought Covalet for 20 rounds. He had one moment. Just one. I get up. I kind of walk back and forth. I'm processed and I realize I'm not that hurt. I'm not that hurt. I'm good. That was more of a flash knockdown. And the first thing I started to feel was embarrassment because I worked my whole career to not be on the canvas. In training camp, I don't even do sit-ups on the canvas. I don't play on the canvas. I don't roll on the ring to grab something. I don't, if it's some tape on the ground, I'm not going to, you know, sometimes fighters will roll in the ring and grab the tape or do whatever they're going to do.

26:27I don't play on that canvas. There's no reason for me to be down there. So I'm not supposed to beat it. And the standard that we have as a team, we don't end up there, even though we know you can. So I knew a lot of people didn't expect me to win this fight, but I had been fighting taller fighters with reach and that can hit my whole life. My brother, Jonathan, I went to war with him. He was the first Tommy Hearns like fighter that I had to deal with every single day in the gym. my brother hit me harder than anybody good jab good reach mean and had a had a nasty right hand i had fought taller fighters all throughout my amateur career i have fought sergey kovalev or a version of him so many times throughout my career somebody who's invincible unbeatable and who hits hard.

27:22You know we got to add that in there. I fought Sergey Kovalev three times in the Olympics. Tall, rangy guys that can put your lights out if you make one mistake. But for all that they talk about, which you should acknowledge as a fighter, a lot of times fighters get into these big fights and they try to ignore the strengths and only highlight the weakness. You got to look the strengths in the eye and say, no, he can punch. No, that right hand is dangerous. that's how you you cause your training and your mind to elevate to that next level if you have it in you you got to acknowledge the good but the things that the writers and the fans they don't acknowledge and the other side the opponent don't acknowledge is hey man you can hit your good boxer i've never seen anybody do that to bernard hopkins before i gotta i gotta take that into account but man i heard you got some bad habits though bad habits that a fighter shouldn't have man I heard sometimes you don't train hard in your camp and that you have conflict with your trainer John David Jackson yeah we did our homework man I see you sometimes in a fight because you got this power other fighters don't press you the way that they should they run away from your power and they let you rest they don't press you because they're afraid hmm that's something I'm going to take advantage of.

28:46Man, I never see you fight on the inside. You don't seem like you know how to block body shots and defend yourself in there because you didn't come from that school of fighting. So you got to acknowledge the good, but you got to have the vision and the IQ to see the weakness. I want to exploit your weakness and take away all your strengths. That's boxing. That's how I approach the game. I get knocked down around two and my coach Virgil, he coached the best fight of his career because he needed that he looked me in the eye and I know that look I know the look that he has when I'm dominating I know the look that he has when I'm getting hit too much and I know that look he has when he's saying you can lose this situation in this fight if you don't step it up and that's the look that he gave me and I'm locked in eye to eye as he says probably one of the most memorable lines that you could say to a to a fighter in that situation ali got knocked down leonard got knocked down you got knocked down now get up and go win every round you're great man this is what greatness is robinson done got up leonard got up ali got up you got up and that was the mission for the rest of the fight see in those situations what's in you that's what's going to come out it's not about talking in that moment if you don't have that bite down if you don't have that dog in you if you got fear in you if you let that right hand spook you brother you're going to have a hard time with a guy like that because he's going to finish you I'm thankful that I had the right stuff in my DNA and in my makeup and that's what everybody saw for the next 10 rounds.

30:38Sergey Kovalev was a good puncher. Wasn't the hardest puncher, but he was a good puncher. If he gets you on the outside of his punch, if he's able to extend that long right hand and that jab, you feel the power. Though it's nothing I haven't felt before. But one of the biggest surprises for me, well, he was, Sergey Kovalev was probably one of the most physically weak fighters that I've ever felt and clinched with in my life. I was shocked at how physically weak he was. I would get in a clinch and I could manhandle him like a ragdoll. I could have threw Kovalev over the top rope if I really wanted to in that fight.

31:12He wasn't physically strong. I can't explain it. I don't know how your punch is strong, but your physical strength isn't. I don't know. Maybe one of y 'all can help me with that. But I did what a champion was supposed to do. I kept digging and I kept fighting and I kept scratching and I kept clawing. And I believe it was Max Kellerman Who said that night that Only a great fighter Can win a fight like this I hate to lose I didn't know what the judges were looking at And I know how a knockdown can sway people But I knew that I could beat Kovalev I knew I just had to keep chopping wood And I felt Kovalev weaken Fourth round Bad habits start showing up at the wrong time.