Andre Ward’s contract with Goosen Tutor valid

By Boxing News - 04/30/2014 - Comments

ward1By Scott Gilfoid: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward’s contract with Goosen Tutor was ruled valid by the California State Athletic Commission earlier today. Ward now has another two and half years until his contract expires on November 8th, 2016. Ward will be close to 33 when his contract is up with Goosen, and it’s anyone’s guess whether he’ll still be the same fighter at that point in his career.

Wards also lost an arbitration hearing last year when he was trying to get out of his contract at that time. According to Dan Rafael, Ward signed a contract extension with his promoter Dan Goosen in April of 2011. There was a delay in the contract beginning until 2012, due to Ward being out of action for a considerable amount of time because of a shoulder injury he had suffered while training.

“It’s now time to sit down with Andre and his advisers to put these legal disputes behind us and concentrate on getting Andre back to fighting consistently inside the ring,” Goosen said to ESPN. “Andre and I have had success together and there’s no reason not to get back on tract as a team to secure his status as the top fighter in the world behind Floyd Mayweather.”

Ward hasn’t fought since last November when he beat Edwin Rodriguez by a 12 round decision.

Ward needs to fight as often as he can, because he’s lost a lot of time in his career due to injuries, and the slow start of his career where he wasn’t fighting top fighters until 2009 after turning pro in 2004. As good as Ward is, he could have been fighting top guys by 2006, especially considering that he captured a gold medal in the 2004 Olympics. Fighters that when gold medals are able to move quicker with their careers, but Ward was still brought along slowly.

For Ward to get big fights, he’s going to need to move from the super middleweight to light heavyweight divisions, because there’s really not much for him at 168 right now given that the top guys don’t want to fight him.



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