Andre Ward won’t be pressured to move to 175

By Boxing News - 12/23/2013 - Comments

ward5635By Scott Gilfoid: In the past past since the emergence of light heavyweight talents Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev there’s been a lot of talk from fans and sports writers about Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KO’s) needing to leave the super middleweight to move up to 175 to compete with those two fighters, as well as against the 48-year-old Bernard Hopkins.

Ward doesn’t feel he needs to right now, and he’s not going to let himself be pressured to move up in weight before his body has out-grown the 168 lb. division.

“I’m not going to let people, based on what they say, rush me to 75,” Ward said to Fight Hype. “I’m not a 175-pounder right now. When we go to 175, we’re going to be ready for 175.”

The last thing Ward wants is to leave the super middleweight division before his body is ready to be facing 175 lb. fighters. Besides that, there honestly isn’t a lot of top fighters in the light heavyweight division once you get past Hopkins, Stevenson and Kovalev. Ward could find himself with non one to fight once he whips those three fighters.

It’ll be kind of like it is now at 168. Once he dominated Carl Froch, Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Sakio Bika and Edwin Rodriguez, there was no one else for Ward to fight. Froch and Kessler haven’t shown any interest in getting a second helping from Ward, so he’s kind of stuck in a situation where he has to wait around and hope that someone like WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin will feel courageous enough to move up in weight to fight him. That hasn’t happened yet, but Ward is still hoping it does. But if he moves up to 175, then there won’t be a chance to fight Golovkin.

Another reason why it’s better for Ward to stay at 168 is because he could get a fight with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. in the near future, and that would be a good money fight. There’s a lot of good middleweight that Ward can fight by staying at 168. He may have totally cleaned out the 168 lb. division, but it’s still in his best interest to stay at this weight due to him being nearer to the bigger names.

Stevenson and Kovalev aren’t big enough names yet for Ward to fight them and it being a huge money fight. And as far as Hopkins goes, he’ll likely never agree to fight Ward, so that option isn’t really on the table. Ward would only have Stevenson and Kovalev to fight if he moved up to the light heavyweight division. Fighting Beibut Shumenov and/or Jurgen Braehmer wouldn’t be big fights for Ward, even if he could get those guys to agree to fight him, which I don’t think he could.



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