By William Mackay: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (25-0, 13 KO’s) said he was surprised at how slow his opponent WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch (28-2, 20 KO’s) when the two fighters first started mixing it up earlier tonight.

Ward, who has become accustomed to facing opponents with better hand speed, was able to hit Froch at will tonight in pounding out a 12 round unanimous decision to win the Super Six tournament.

Ward told sportinglife.com “Right away I was surprised at how slow Froch was. We were able to beat him to the punch. You don’t get points for leaving your chin open. You can’t fight like that and expect not to get hit. I kept my composure, stayed calm and we pulled it off tonight.”

Ward is talking about Froch’s fighting stance where he leaves his hands down by his sides and tries to use his reflexes to react to punches so that he can lean away at the last second. Froch was successful with this fighting style pre-2009, but when we went from facing 2nd tier domestic level fighters to top tier guys starting with his fights against Jean Pascal and Jermain Taylor, Froch began to get hit repeatedly due to his low guard.

Those fights should have given Froch a big hint that he’s too slow to be fighting with his hands down by his sides. That was shown to be the case in the Super Six tournament over and over again in fights against Andre Dirrell, Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Glen Johnson and finally Ward.