First I would like to thank HBO sports for brightening my Sunday and possibly heralding a return to real sports. For on Bryant Gumble’s ‘Real Sports’ the headline dude was left in the awkward position of stating that 130 American golf courses have closed every year since 2007! That should leave more room for my kind of manliness in months and years too some.

Blake seems to be an Australian of Italian descent with a cranium well-designed for his chosen profession. He is a quirky southpaw that shows weird angles and uses a low lead to bait his opponent. As I saw—gleefully I might add, because I never liked hotdogs and trash talkers—with Ali in the 1970’s, using superior athletic gifts to break the rules of your art pays great dividends early on, and leads to disaster later on. Like Ali, Blake keeps his lead low to sucker his man into committing to the attack, confident that he will be able to frustrate and counter said attack, and pull off the decision. Blake Caparella is an awkward and relatively slow rendition of Ali.

We must credit Blake for fighting Kovalev when most won’t, and also hope he gets another big payday, because he does have potential. The problem was, he played the wrong game with the wrong guy. He probably would have done fine toying with a stocky puncher, or a big lumbering heavyweight. The problem is that Kovelev is a tall rangy puncher whose freakish power is derived through technique, timing, and the poise borne of the realization that no one in his class hits harder. As a fighter—let’s say a stick fighter in a tournament, or a boxer throughout his career—when you know, and your opponents know, and they know you know, and you know they know you know, that you fire the heaviest ammunition, that is a game changer.

I’ve been on both ends of that equation in boxing and in stick fighting. The psychological ramifications are huge. Being the craftier fighter who shoots beebees while the clutz fires artillery is like being the smart scientific dude in a horror flick; the dude who is too smart for the hack screen writer to keep alive until the end.

On the other hand, if you are the guy with dynamite in your hands and have a good chin, then you can play; which relaxes you and makes your punches whippier, meaning harder.

This was a short fight which was ended—essentially—when Kovalev landed a straight right lead to the ribs just above the liver. This is a nice way to defeat a Philly shell defense which is what Blake favored. After that everything that hit him on the gloves or head—or Thor forbid—the body, reverberated through his thoraxic cage and rattled either the torn cartilage, torn intercostals or broken rib.

The thing to watch with Kovalev is how total his will to dominate is. Blake just gave him a little trouble, some sneaky angles and a foot step, and he went all Dempsey on him, hammering him to the back of the head when he was down. As Roy Jones so sagely noted from ringside when Blake stepped on Kovalev's foot and knocked him down with a sharp punch, “That should piss him off pretty good.”

That is when the comic act to this drama unfolded, in the form of perky little Sparkle Lee, the small black babe referee charged with making these two big mutant white boys play nice. Unable to pry these men apart she put her hands on Kovalev as he was prepared to attack the back of the head and said, “Don’t go there.”

Kovalev can KO anyone south of the giant heavies. The problem is he is fighting Hopkins next, and he is psychologically made to order for “the Executioner”. That will be an interesting match.

The commentator asked Kovalev about his use of the bolo punch [a looping rear uppercut], and Kovalev craftily answered that he was imitating Sugar Ray Leonard who was imitating Kid ‘The Cuban Hawk’ Gavilan. Max seemed to buy it. Hopkins didn’t, I am sure. The fact is, for anybody with a huge straight right ‘mugging’ with the rear hand right uppercut [which is usually a stupid option and leaves you open for huge counters] sets up a straight right lead, and Blake was a southpaw don’t you know…

Earlier on the same broadcast Jesse Vargas showed excellent use of a lead right uppercut out of a high guard. This worked for Jesse because he keeps a well coiled rear right leg to power his beautiful straight right, which put him in an either/or feint/throw position for the lead straight right and lead right uppercut against southpaw Anton Nevilov.

Anton is a workhorse attrition fighter who proved simultaneously that body punching can steal an opponent’s smoke, and also that it won’t win you the decision against a house fighter.

If you are a young fighter preparing to go out into the ring in this world that seems to breed increasingly more southpaws, or if you wish to be that southpaw to reckon with, you could do worse than to pull up Kovalev versus Caparello and Vargas versus Novilov and study the use of the rear right hand and the all important leg beneath it.