By Steve Kim

Darnell Boone, perhaps more than anyone has an intimate knowledge of Sergey Kovalev (30-0-1, 26KOs) and Andre Ward (30-0, 15KOs), who will meet on November 19th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

Boone, has a split decision loss and was stopped in two rounds in his two meetings with Kovalev and in losing a six round decision to Ward early in his career, he floored the 2004 Olympic gold medalist.

And he isn't waffling when it comes to his prediction for this fight.

"I'm rolling with Kovalev," he said without hesitation to BoxingScene.com. "Only because of Ward's inactivity and the way he's been looking in his last fights. He hasn't really been looking complete. I know I might get a lot of feedback on what I'm going to say but I don't care.

"I just call it one-thousand. But (Ward) hasn't proved why he should be up in the pound-for-pound rankings his last couple of fights. I know everybody is going off of what he did in 'the Super Six' and all that, yes, he was great then but with his layoffs now I see a different fighter, I really do."

Boone is currently at the Summit in Big Bear, where he's in camp with Gennady Golovkin, who is preparing to face Kell Brook on September 10th in London.

Since defeating Carl Froch in December of 2011, he has fought just five times with long stretches of inactivity (including 2014 where he didn't fight at all as he battled his former promoter Dan Goossen). He has fought twice in 2016, out-pointing Sullivan Barrera in late March and then Alexander Brand on August 6th.

In Boone's opinion - "his quickness is still there, he's not moving as much as he used to. He's more flat-footed. He's just not doing much of the stuff he used to at the smaller weights."

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.