Andre Ward still without opponent for November fight

By Boxing News - 08/25/2013 - Comments

WardBy Scott Gilfoid: Unbeaten super middleweight contender Edwin Rodriguez reportedly priced himself out of the negotiations for a fight against WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward, according to Fighthype.

Ward is saying that Rodriguez turned down a very generous offer that would have been the biggest payday of his career had he accepted it to face him in November. Rather than waste time trying to get a fight against Rodriguez and being met with road blocks, Ward and his promoter are moving on. However, there’s not a whole of options out there for Ward.

HBO has already said no to a perfectly reasonable fight against Dimitri Sartison, and the other top super middleweights are either busy or flat out not interested in facing the talented Ward. It’s getting to the point where Ward may have to look in the other weight divisions to try and have his promoter entice one of those fighters to face him.

Unfortunately, there’s not of big name guys at 160 or 175 that would readily agree to face Ward, especially not after how Ward badly dominated Chad Dawson last year in Stopping him in the 10th round.

If it was just a question of Ward looking for a fight to stay busy, it would be no big deal to find a talented fringe contender. The thing that’s getting in the way of Ward easily finding an opponent is that they need to find someone that HBO will say yes to, and that’s not easy. HBO doesn’t want to put on mismatch, and the problem is ANYONE at 168 that you throw in the ring with Ward, it’s going to be a mismatch.

It doesn’t matter who it is. If they put in Carl Froch or Mikkel Kessler, those guys would get dominated by Ward as well. I mean, HBO would say yes to those mismatches, but they’d be no different outcomes than if Ward were to select a fringe contender like Sartison. That’s why HBO might as well say yes to whoever Ward fights, because none of them stands a chance against this talent.

If Ward is having problems getting HBO to agree to his fights, he should think about moving over to Showtime. Ward can’t put his career on a permanent hold waiting for HBO to finally bless one of the choices that his promoter makes for him in terms of opponents, because if HBO is waiting for Froch or Kessler to agree to fight Ward, they’re probably going to be waiting forever. Neither of those guys are excited about getting back in the with Ward after having been whipped by him in the past. Ward is essentially the Goliath of the super middleweight division, and nobody wants to mess with Goliath.



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