IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev
It was a typically warm and sunny Southern California afternoon on Tuesday and, on a sun-drenched Target Terrace at LA Live, a media gathering was held to formally announce the Nov. 19 bout between Sergey Kovalev and Andre Ward.
While the unified light heavyweight champion was present, Ward – who just fought in Oakland last weekend against Alexander Brand – was not. (The guess is that, after that arduous 12-round battle with Brand, the 45-minute flight from the Bay Area to LAX was a bit too much from which to recover.)
This function was scheduled to kick off at around 11 in the morning but, as it reached High Noon (which is actually still “on time” by boxing standards) and then past 12:30, one started to wonder what was going on. For much of this time, the head of Main Events, Kathy Duva had her cell phone attached to her ear and, behind the stage, you could see Kovalev, his manager Egis Klimas, Peter Nelson of HBO Sports and the Main Events staff huddling.
An emergency huddle in a very trying moment…
Finally, this live-streamed event began with Duva making a not-so-rather vague reference to hoping this fight will happen somewhere. That opening statement raised the eyebrows of everyone in attendance. Later, she described negotiating with Roc Nation Sports as ”a living hell.”
So the question is: Do we have a fight on Nov. 19?
”There will be if Andre Ward wants to have a fight but I can’t promise you, at this point, what they want, “Duva told UCNlive.com.
How does a fight that seemed to be signed, sealed and delivered, when Kovalev and Ward shook hands within the ring at the Oracle on HBO, look to be in disarray now?
“It started last week when they let us know, after weeks of planning this press conference, that Andre Ward wouldn’t come and it continued through Saturday afternoon when they informed us hours before we were supposed to announce that the fight’s happening at the T-Mobile (Arena in Las Vegas), they didn’t want to make that announcement,” explained Duva. “They promised us that we would make it today, the tickets being on sale, that announcement would be made today.
“This morning, as I got up, I got a note saying that they were reneging on that promise. I’m trying to figure out why and all I can think of is maybe they’re trying to bully us into the Oracle. Maybe Andre’s worried; I don’t know.”
Hours before the HBO broadcast on Saturday, there were reports that this match-up could head east to Madison Square Garden in New York. But months prior, the organizers of this event had placed a hold on the new arena in Las Vegas.
Duva states, “Dave Itskowitch, who worked for Roc Nation at the time, and I made a deal with the MGM. We had a deal. The on-sale should’ve happened now. They were saying, ‘We need signed contracts, blah, blah, blah.’ I don’t think I’ve ever done a fight where contracts with an arena were signed before (tickets) went on sale. But it seems, every day, it’s something. So I have to assume that we’ll either resolve this or we won’t.”
There is also this issue – the expected return of Manny Pacquiao. “My fear is, of course, Bob Arum (CEO of Top Rank Promotions) wants to do a fight in Las Vegas on November 5th and he wants the November 19th date and, if we lose our venue on the 19th, my fear is that we’ll lose this date and I hope that doesn’t happen.”
Clearly exasperated, Duva wasn’t afraid to call out her promotional counterparts. She isn’t the first to question their tactics or overall competence.
“Look,” she said, with a resigned tone, “I know it’s not going to make it any easier to work with them but, frankly, I’m frustrated right now. You work; you have great meetings. Everything’s going well; there’s a lot of great, talented people there. Everything is planned and then it seems this brinkmanship, hours before we have things planned, it keeps happening. So I have to assume that this will last for awhile.”
(UCNlive.com emailed Roc Nation Sports for a comment on the situation but never received a reply.)
The good news is we’re still in early August, still plenty of time to consummate a deal. But is there a deadline in place?
“I really can’t give you a day,” answered Duva, “I really do hope we can work out our differences. As far as I’m concerned, we do have an agreement with the MGM and we plan to live up to it. What Roc Nation decides to do…I think it’s very telling if they do decide to pull out of the agreement that they made back in June. Perhaps there’s more going on than we know.”
This was a rather surreal scene that unfolded and, for the first time in memory, there was a press conference for a pay-per-view card in which one-half of the main event (and his promotional team) did not show up. This is a rather odd way to promote. There are still some in the industry who have their doubts whether Ward will live up to this agreement. (Based on his history, it’s not the most outlandish prediction.)
Meanwhile, Kovalev showed up early and took care of his duties with the gathered media.
“He wants to fight,” said Duva, who revealed, “Frankly, if it were up to to me, this afternoon, after what I’ve been going through the last several days, I was ready to pull the plug – Sergey’s not. Of course he isn’t, so I can’t let that happen. He wants this fight; this is the defining fight of his career and I want it because I can’t wait to watch it.”
So as she eventually wrapped up with the press on this afternoon, Duva would soon be back on the phone with Roc Nation trying to iron things out.
“My lawyer’s in the middle of it now. Look, I’ve lived through times with Bob Arum and Don King back in the heyday of our sport, back when my husband ran things. We’ve made deals far more contentious than this. But it gets to a point, you’re in a small business where everybody has to work together. And either you approach things in good faith or you don’t. I have approached this in good faith up until today.
“Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the other side.”
TNR
Here’s this week’s edition of “The Next Round” with Gabe Montoya and Yours Truly.
LA LIVE FLURRIES
Marcos Maidana officially announced his retirement on Tuesday. I’ll have a tribute column on him later this week on UCNlive.com…Terence Crawford and Danny Garcia were jousting on Twitter, too bad that they may never do so in a real fight in the near future…Speaking of Crawford, my guess is he won’t be talking to anyone from Channel 6 in Omaha anytime soon…”Hard Knocks” is back on HBO, which is always a good thing…I just knew John Stone would retrieve that cat!!…Love what I’m hearing about the goings-on at Greentree Practice Field. Mark Richt inherited some solid front line talent at Miami…I can be reached at k9kim@yahoo.com and I tweet (a lot) at twitter.com/steveucnlive. I also share photos of stuff at instagram.com/steveucnlive and can also be found at tsu.co/steveucnlive.
The post We have a fight…right? appeared first on Undisputed Champion Network.