By Thomas Cowan: Andre Ward is one of the most talented boxers in the world, as his top 3 pound-for-pound ranking shows. He has cleaned out the super middleweight division and at 30, he is in his physical prime. However, Ward currently has no fight scheduled due to legal issues and has only fought twice since December 2011? So is he wasting his career?
Ward has been fairly inactive, since he established himself as the best super middleweight in the world, and one of the best ever, by easily outpointed Carl Froch in Atlantic City in last 2011. This is partly due to injury, but it is mostly due to his legal battles with his promoter, Dan Goosen. Ward feels he is not being promoted properly, presumably feeling that it is Goosen’s fault he is yet to join the likes of Floyd Mayweather, Manny Pacquiao and Saul Alvarez as pay-per-view star. So, is this accurate?
Ward has been with Goosen since his debut, where Goosen got him a slot live on HBO. After 20 fights, where Andre did his job in the ring superbly, Goosen managed to secure him a fantastic opportunity. This was a place in the Showtime Super Six tourney, designed to find the heir to Joe Calzaghe’s super middleweight crown. Not only that, Goosen managed to bring Mikkel Kessler to Oakland, Ward’s hometown, for Andre’s first fight. Ward took Kessler’s WBA title by technical decision after the fight was stopped due to cuts to Kessler’s face caused by Ward headbutts. Ward then fought every single one of this Super Six fights in his home country of USA, a privilege no other competitor had. All of these fights were live on Showtime.
Ward didn’t fight for 10 months after the end of the Super Six due to injury. On his return, Goosen managed to set up a fight with the #1 light heavyweight Chad Dawson, live on HBO. Goosen even managed to get Dawson to drop down to super middleweight after Ward decided he didn’t want to go up to light heavyweight and match Joe Calzaghe’s feat of winning lineal titles at 168 and 175lbs. Ward stopped an obviously weight-drained Dawson in 10 rounds.
Then in 2013, Ward began legal procedures to split for Goosen, who he is still contracted to, after becoming frustrated that he wasn’t a star. However, analysing Ward’s career so far, it seems Goossen has done a great job and the reason for Ward’s lack of popularity lies closer to home. He simply isn’t exciting enough, inside or outside the ring, to become a star. Mayweather has charisma, Pacquiao’s fights are usually exciting, Alvarez has his huge Mexican fanbase and Ward doesn’t have these things going for him. He is a great boxer, Froch summed him up perfectly by saying he is “always too close, or too far away”. He is the epitomy of the sweet science which tells you to “hit and not get hit”. But does anyone really care? People from Oakland do. Hardcore boxing fans do. But everyone else? Not really.
Some fans will claim that Ward is being ducked by the other top fighters around his weight? Gennady Golovkin is certainly not keen to fight him, but why would he be when he can make three times more money fighting Julio Cesar Chavez or Carl Froch? When Froch talked about a rematch with Ward last year, Ward said he might be interested but was quick to point out he doesn’t need to go to Britain to be a star and Froch had to go to USA. This is far from reality. The cold, hard facts are Ward has never earned more than $2 million and has never fought in front of more than 10,000 people. Froch is likely to earn around 8 times that when he fights George Groves in front of 80,000 people next month.
Adonis Stevenson had a great 2013; avenging his only defeat to Darnell Boone by knockout, capturing the WBC and lineal light heavyweight crowns by wiping out Dawson in one round, dismantling former IBF king Tavoris Cloud in 7 and destroying mandatory challenger Tony Bellew inside 6. After he beat Bellew, Stevenson called out Froch and Bernard Hopkins, who are well-known in Adonis’ home country of Canada due to their wins over Jean Pascal and Froch’s destruction of Lucian Bute. Some boxing fans said Stevenson should have challenged himself like a true champion and called out Ward. Maybe so, but why isn’t Ward calling out Stevenson?
Sergey Kovalev, the massive punching WBO light heavyweight champion, expressed an interest in fighting Ward and was met with silence. Ward has previously said he is happy at super middlewight and his body is not ready for light heavyweight. All Ward has had to say in the last few months is that his fanbase is actually growing during his inactivity because fans can’t wait to see him back in the ring. This is delusional. He becomes more and more irrelevant every day.
If Ward wants to become a star he needs to be active and taking on the best fighters, even if this involves going to Canada or Great Britain, or going to 175lbs. Fights like his November 2013 one sided win over Edwin Rodriguez in Oakland (after his dispute with Goosen was temporarily resolved) aren’t going to cut it. Fights against the Chavez-Golovkin winner, Stevenson, Kovalev or Froch (if he beats Groves) will be progress. I’d back Andre to beat all four. If he calls all of them out, offers to go to their backyard (if that’s where to money is) and offers to go to their weight, in the case of Stevenson and Kovalev, and they ignore him then that is not his fault. However, he will definitely not make any progress by holding his fights in a courtroom.
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