Fight Club: Andre Ward must be active and make up for lost time

Andy Lewis 12:58 22/06/2015
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  • Total mismatch: Andre Ward (l) dishes out the punishment against Britain’s Paul Smith.

    It’s been some week for sport in Oakland, California. Fresh from basking in the glory of the Golden State Warriors’ first NBA title since 1975, they witnessed the triumphant return of their finest boxer on Saturday night.

    As literally everybody expected, Andre Ward put a severe beating on the hopelessly overmatched Paul Smith Jr, eventually forcing his corner to throw in the towel during the ninth round.

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    It was Ward’s first fight in 19 months and only his second outing in almost three years. The blood pouring from Smith’s heavily damaged face suggested he got what he wanted from what could only be described as a glorified training session. Now the real work starts.

    A class act in and outside of the ring, as articulate as he is skilful, Ward is curiously unpopular.

    At 28-0, an Olympic gold medallist, the 2011 Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year, a multiple world title holder and undisputed No1 in the super middleweight division, you’d think we would be talking about a household name.

    In fairness, Ward’s inactivity – beacause of a legal dispute and shoulder surgery – is chief among the reasons for his anonymity. But in truth he was struggling to win over fans before that.

    “I have been told that I’m an acquired taste, that I don’t sell tickets and that I’m smug,” he told The Independent before his win over Edwin Rodriguez in November 2013. Inside the ring, Ward may indeed be an acquired taste.

    His fights are not back and forth wars, in fact it is rare an opponent as much as lays a glove on him.

    Aside from that, he likes to bully boxers physically, and for all his hand speed and accuracy, there are usually a lot of clinches as he nullifies a foe. It’s not always great to watch. That certainly doesn’t help him sell tickets, while nor does the fact that his career has never really built up momentum.

    He made his name marching through the Super Six competition, culminating in victory over Carl Froch in 2011, but since then has stagnated.

    As for smugness, Ward is hardly the first boxer to exude supreme self-confidence. Also, a lot of people dislike his ‘Son of God’ nickname, but he isn’t suffering from an acute messiah complex, he’s a born-again Christian who felt more at ease using a biblical quote instead of the standard issue menacing ring alias.

    The good news for Ward is that there are potentially some big fights for him to revive a career that has gone stale in hibernation. He has already started mentioning Gennady Golovkin’s name.

    The Kazakh has the sort of momentum behind him that Ward craves and in his search for an elite scalp could be persuaded to step up in weight and challenge the American. Such a bout would pit the world’s No1 middleweight against the No1 super middleweight and with a bit of build-up could be a pay per view event in the US.

    It would be a risky fight for Golovkin given Ward is massive at 168lbs and is perhaps more suited to the light heavyweight division, the weight class in which he won Olympic gold back in 2004.

    Should Ward want to move up himself, then names such as Sergey Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson jump out immediately.

    If he stays at 168lbs, a rematch with Froch looks increasingly unlikely, but James DeGale, the IBF champion, would provide quality if not blockbuster opposition. Either way, Ward has options and the absolute key now is to stay busy and fight two or three times a year. Given he turned 31 in February another lengthy hiatus would see his prime years spurned entirely.

    On the subject of wasted talent, Adrien Broner suffered a second career defeat as he was comfortably out-pointed by Shawn Porter on Saturday night. At 25, Broner’s career is again at a crossroads. It’s been clear for some time he can’t live with elite welterweights.

    He started as a super featherweight and peaked as a formidable lightweight, however, he can no longer get near that on the scales.

    So what next for ‘the Problem’? There’s no way he should even consider any opponent over 140lbs or his once promising career will slide even further off the rails.

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