Oftentimes in boxing, fans are asked to shell out their hard-earned cash for mismatches. Like the pay-per-view show earlier this month that pitted Manny Pacquiao against Jessie Vargas.
Or the May bout between puncher Canelo Alvarez and a blown-up, chinny Amir Khan, not to mention Canelo?s September PPV bout against Liam Smith. Both ended in Canelo knockouts.
HBO?s offering Saturday on pay-per-view (9 p.m. ET) featuring Sergey Kovalev against Andre Ward is no such matchup. The unified light heavyweight title fight is simply one of the two best fights that can be made in boxing (Gennady Golovkin-Canelo Alvarez the other).
Kovalev-Ward pits two of the top-five pound-for-pound fighters in the world, and they?re both at the height of their powers. It?s also a fascinating clash of styles.
Kovalev is a sinister puncher. He?s USA TODAY Sport?s No. 1 175-pounder and with good reason. The Russian doesn?t just knock opponents out ? he inflicts career-changing punishment (Roman Simakov actually died from his injuries after fighting Kovalev in 2011).
And Kovalev seems to take great pleasure in doing so. LIke the time he motioned for fallen foe Ismayl Sillah to rise from the canvas following a brutal knockdown so he could rattle his brain a few more times.
Or the time Kovalev admitted after dishing out a beating on Jean Pascal (for a second time) that he purposely didn?t finish the fight earlier so he could really make the Canadian pay.
Kovalev (30-0-1, 26 KOs) isn?t just a big puncher, though. He?s quite an underrated boxer. The 33-year-old?s excellent range-finding jab sets his combinations up. ?Krusher? also is an impressive body puncher.
Ward, though, isn?t there to receive any such pummeling. He?s perhaps the greatest talent in a sport chock-full of them. The Oakland, Calif.-native is incredibly cerebral. He?s a master of distance and range ? always far enough from his foe to avoid the attack, but close enough to deliver his own shots.
Simply put, Ward (30-0, 15 KOs) is a maestro in the ring conducting for his ringside orchestra. Nothing he does is flashy. The 32-year-old doesn?t pack a devastating punch like Kovalev. He doesn?t possess the lightning-quick hands of Floyd Mayweather. But Ward doesn?t make mistakes ? ever.
?S.O.G? (short for Son of God) is always in position. And forget about fighting him on the inside. The Olympic gold medalist bullies the bully, time and again.
Ward has an uncanny ability to bull-rush his opponent to the ropes, then tie up their arms like a pretzel all while somehow finding a way to deliver scoring punches of his own.
It?s what wins him fights. It?s what led him to clean out the 168-pound division. And it?s what makes Saturday such a special fight.
Can Kovalev tangle with Ward on the inside and dictate his own pace against a ring general? Can Ward stay away from Kovalev?s big right, and if he does absorb one, will his chin hold up?
Many questions will be answered Saturday in a true coin-flip affair (even Las Vegas oddsmakers have it close to a dead heat at sportsbooks with Ward a slight favorite.)
But one thing is for certain: unlike Mayweather-Pacquiao and so many others, this is a fight worth waiting for.
