As Ward tried to land his lead shots he would follow through with his head. Kessler would be the worse for wear whenever the two had their heads crash together. He suffered cuts around both of his eyes. This off set Kessler all not long. Kessler was not able to make any adjustments to what he was facing in Ward or the cuts around his eyes. Frustration began to settle in and Kessler seemed dejected a little after the mid way point of the fight. His body language suggested that he had no answers for what Ward was doing.
What was also impressively done by Ward was his ability to stick to the plan of holding and wrestling for arm possession and leverage with Kessler on the inside. Kessler is not a good inside fighter, so it was not in his fighting instincts to wrestle his arms free in order to rip crushing inside hooks or upper cuts. In fact Kessler never even used his upper cuts at all. Nor would he take advantage of the several mistakes that Ward would make. Due to his classic European style, Kessler pulled back with his head straight up and got caught by some of Wards leaping lead punches, while he was unable to counter Ward and punish him for his flaw of leaping straight in.
Every time Kessler would trap Ward into an exchange, Ward was able to make small slips and rolls that helped him avoid the incoming fire. As a result any time throughout the fight that Ward was caught it was with single shots, which Ward was able to handle. Kessler enjoys throwing combinations, but Ward made sure that he moved after one of his slips or rolls in order to get out of position of the Kessler follow up.
On several occasions Ward switched to southpaw which completely confused Kessler. During his training camp, Kessler never sparred with any south paws. He admitted that he felt as though Ward would not make that switch that often during the fight. This was just another aspect of the fight that Kessler was wrong about. Ward switched and found success for his left hands. As he took total control over the flow of the fight he switched less, until he stopped all together. Almost as if Ward knew that he already had broken his opponents will as he settled in to the game plan that was working.
After round seven Kessler told his corner that he was unable to see out of his right eye due to one of the cuts. To his credit he did not want to stop fighting and answered the bell for round eight. But it was the body language of Kessler that told the story. You could see that all of these elements, Wards speed and fluid skill, the head butts that caused cuts and his inability to fight on the inside were taking a huge mental toll on the champion.
In round eleven the referee stopped the action in order to have the doctor take yet another look at the cuts. This time the referee didn’t hesitate to call an end to the action for good. At first everyone believed that Ward was victorious by technical knockout due to the cuts. However the referee had called that the cuts were caused by accidental head butts, this meant the fight would have to go to the scorecards. Going to the scorecards was only a technicality in itself. Ward had dominated the fight from start to finish.
As the scores were being read everyone inside of the Oracle Arena and watching at home had just seen the most impressive performance of this innovate boxing series. Andre Ward has arrived in the sport of boxing and has accomplished a lifelong dream, congratulations Andre.
Final scores were 97-93, and two scores of 98-92.
Not only was this the most impressive and dominate performance from the first round of fights in the series. Andre Ward now carries the most momentum going into the second round of this boxing classic. Of course team Abraham would have something to say about that, considering that he is in the lead in the standings (scoring three points for his knockout over Taylor), but Ward hit a home run in three different trips to the plate last night. He won his first championship, became the first American to win a fight in the series, and had the best all around fight against a champion that was the favorite by many to win the entire tournament.
As for Kessler (42-2, 32 Kos), he takes on Carl Froch in the second round. I have a feeling that Froch’s style should play a little better into the strengths of Kessler than Ward’s. He has a chance to clam a championship and get back into the series, especially if he can stop Froch.
Andre Ward (21-0, 13Kos) takes on fellow American Jermain Taylor in what should be an interesting clash of styles between these two former Olympians. It will be interesting to see how Ward handles being a new world champion and how Taylor handles fighting someone that is now in the same type of possession he used to covet in the middleweight division.
**
Both Shawn Porter and Raymond Serrano were victorious tonight in Mississippi. For Porter he rapped up a good second half of the year for his young career. Porter was the main sparring partner for Manny Pacquiao going into last week’s fight with Cotto and was able to translate that experience into benefits for his own career capturing a technical knockout.
Serrano also rapped up a good year. Serrano like Porter has worked with the pound for pound champ as he was part of the camp that prepared for the Hatton fight. He also fought on ESPN Friday Night Fights and was able to capture a unanimous decision victory. Both fighters improve their records to 12-0.
