Andre Ward inks with Roc Nation

By Boxing News - 01/09/2015 - Comments

ward45By Scott Gilfoid: In some exciting news, WBA Super World middleweight champion Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KOs) is saying that he’s signed with the promotional company Roc Nation Sports. Ward has out of action with legal issues with his promoters at Goosen. Ward worked out an agreement to end his contract with Goosen Promotions last Friday, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

Ward ended up missing all of 2014 due to his legal issues, and it’s quite possible he’ll be looking to return to the ring in 2015 with Roc Nation. Whether Ward will be able to legally do this is unclear at this point.

This is big move by Ward in signing with Jay Z’s Roc Nation Sports, because it could open some doors for interesting fights in 2015. Yeah, it might not be against the unwilling top guys at 168, who have shown little interest in fighting Ward, but at least he’ll be fighting again.

“It’s official!! #NextChapter Happy to be a part of the @rocnation family. #RocNationSports #SOG.”

Ward hasn’t fought since he schooled the talented Edwin Rodriguez by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in November 2013. Ward made a very, very good fighter look mediocre in dominating him for 12 one-sided rounds in that fight.

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Of all the top super middleweights in the division, Ward is recognized by many boxing fans to be the best of the bunch. He beat Carl Froch pretty much with just one hand in their Super Six finals fight in December 2011. Unfortunately for Ward, he’s fought only twice since then, beating Chad Dawson and Rodriguez.

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With that kind of time off from the boxing ring, you’ve got to imagine that there’s some ring rust there for Ward. However, he’s kept himself busy by sparring and working out a lot, so it’s not likely that he’s lost anything in terms of his skills. On the contrary, Ward has probably preserved himself by not fighting because he’s not had to take punishment.

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If Ward does come back in 2015, you can expect him to face many of the same problems that he had before his long layoff. I’m talking about him not being able to get the top fighters in the super middleweight division to agree to face him.

He’d like to fight Froch and Mikkel Kessler again, but the chances of either of those guys facing him are pretty much zero because they’ve shown little interest in facing him. Ward would also like to fight Gennady Golovkin, the fighter seen by many boxing fans at the No.1 guy at middleweight, but that’s probably not going to happen either.

Ward’s best chances to get big fights are if he’s open to moving up to light heavyweight for a fight or two against the likes of Sergey Kovalev, Jean Pascal and Adonis Stevenson. Ward has said in the past that there isn’t much there at light heavyweight once he fights Kovalev. However, he’s in a situation where he needs to get whatever fight he can.

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It doesn’t mean that he needs to stay at 175 after he faces Kovalev. It just means he takes whatever fight he can get, and then moves back down and keeps busy against whoever is willing to fight him at super middleweight until he can get another interesting fight like perhaps Stevenson or Pascal. Even Artur Beterbiev would be an exciting fight for Ward and it would increase his stature if he were to beat him.



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