BoxRec

I imagine that both were a little off of their top form, considering that Kovalev recently failed to stop Chilemba and Ward has not faced top competition in a while. But neither are severely past their primes, they merely look it because they fought each other. I constantly see unproven prospects hyped infinitely because they looked extraordinarily good against some opponent without a pulse. But that's how boxing works -- you look amazing against sh*tty opponents, decent against decent opponents, and sh*tty against amazing opponents. There's been countless times where the boxing public pegged some heavyweight contender like Chambers, Arreola, Chagaev, Haye, or Peter as having an outside chance of beating a Klitschko; and once they actually fight a Klitschko, they look like absolute crap and the public permanently turns on them. There have been countless times where Hopkins and Mayweather have made their opponents look like total crap -- even opponents like Felix Trinidad. Kovalev is so good that he made Ward look a lot sh*ttier than Froch, Kessler, and Dawson made him look. Ward is so good that he made Kovalev look a lot sh*ttier than Hopkins and Pascal made him look. They were both trying to mess-up each other's game plan, and they both succeeded. Kovalev was trying to totally shut down Ward's tactics of bullying an opponent against the ropes and fighting on the inside, and he succeeded. Ward was trying to render Kovalev's long-range punching inaccurate and ineffective, and he succeeded.