Andre Ward vs. Paul Smith negotiations near completion for June 20th fight

By Boxing News - 04/21/2015 - Comments

ward44By Scott Gilfoid: Negotiations for a fight between WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KOs) and former two time world title challenger Paul Smith (35-5, 20 KOs) are reportedly close to being completed this week for a fight that will be taking place on June 20th.

The Ward-Smith fight is expected to be announced very soon, according to the Daily Mail. The fight will take place in beautiful Oakland, California at the Oracle Arena. The bout will be 12 rounds, but it’s not likely to go more than six unless Ward carries Smith in order to get in some rounds.

It might be in Ward’s best interest to carry Smith as long as he can because he badly needs to get some rounds in due to his long layoff from the ring. The last fight that Ward had was against the talented Edward Rodriguez in 2013. I think Rodriguez would destroy Smith as well if he were taking the fight with him instead of Ward.

Boxing fans want to see Ward in with the likes of Carl Froch, the Dirrell brothers, Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev and Artur Beterbiev. However, Ward isn’t interested in moving up to the light heavyweight division at this time, and it’s unknown if he ever will. If he outgrows the 168 pound division, then he’ll make the move, but until then he’s going to stay put in the division and continue to rule.

Smith, 32, recently got consecutive title shots against WBO 168 pound strap holder Arthur Abraham. Smith lost the first fight in September of 2014 in a 12 round decision. Smith complained a ton after the loss. After listening to the bellyaching for a while, Abraham finally relented to give Smith a rematch in February of this year. The result was the same with Abraham easily winning the fight. Thankfully, Smith didn’t complain again because it would have been a tragedy if there was a third fight between them.

Ward has been out of action for over a year with contract problems with his old promoter. Ward is now signed with Roc Nation Sports, but still finding how hard it is to get the big names to want to get in the ring with him.

I’ll be the first to admit that the Ward-Smith fight isn’t a great one. Smith is way out of Ward’s class, and he won’t be able to do much in this fight other than to soak up punishment from start to finish. But you can’t blame Ward for wanting to take a tune-up bout because he’s been out of action for so long.

Ward has to be careful against Smith because he can punch when he plants his feet and puts everything he has into his shots. We saw Smith hurt George Groves in the 1st round in their fight in 2011 after nailing him with a big right hand near the end of the round. Unfortunately for Smith, he injured his hand while hitting Groves, and he was unable to protect himself in the next round was blasted out by Groves.



Comments are closed.