by Steve Kim

While the majority of the viewing public believed that Sergey Kovalev (30-1, 26 KOs) deserved to have his hands raised in victory on November 19th when he faced Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The trio of Burt Clements, Glenn Trowbridge and John McKaie all scored the bout 114-113 for Ward, who was down in the second round of the contest. There was a rematch clause in place, which Kovalev exercised to force the immediate second meeting.

The June 17th rematch between the two will take place in the same jurisdiction (but this time at the Mandalay Bay) and once again on HBO Pay-Per-View.

When talking about the selection of judges for Ward-Kovalev II, Kathy Duva, the head of Main Events (which represents Kovalev) stated:

"We're in business, Nevada was the right place for the fight. It is the place where we'll do the most money on that weekend. That's the weekend we were given and all good business sense told us to go to Nevada. Their rules are that the commission selects the officials."

For this event, while a co-promotion, Roc Nation Sports is the lead promoter given that Ward was the victor in the initial match-up.

According to Duva, they wanted to make a request with the Nevada State Athletic Commission - "We wanted to go to them and ask for neutral officials, that's something I asked for, but Andre Ward would have none of that,'' stated Duva, who explained that by 'neutral', any judge not from the United States or Russia.

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.