(Photo credit: Tom Hogan – Hoganphotos/Roc Nation Sports) By Scott Gilfoid: Former two time world title challenger Paul Smith (35-5, 20 KOs) may be hopelessly over-matched in Saturday’s fight against Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KOs), but Smith rests with the comfort in his mind that Ward doesn’t usually hurt his opponents.
That’s what Smith feels and that’s what Carl Froch believes as well. Well, we’re going to see if Smith is right about that when he gets inside the ring on Saturday at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
Ward, 31, is going to be trying his best to make sure Smith doesn’t see the 12th round. If Smith does make it to the 12th, you had better believe that he’ll have soaked up a great deal of punishment along the way.
“I understand I’m the underdog but this is probably the only opportunity I will get to face such a great boxer. I would be a fool not to take it,” Smith said via the Dailymail.co.uk. “Ward is a brilliant technical boxer but he doesn’t have the power to damage me physically.”
I think there’s a good chance that Ward will put a hurting on Smith on Saturday unless Smith opts to run around the ring for the full 12 rounds to keep out of the way of Ward’s shots. The thing is you can’t run from a fighter as talented as Ward because he’s superb at cutting off the ring on his opponents to force them to fight at close range. I dare say that Ward is as good at cutting off the ring as Gennady Golovkin, and we know how good Golovkin is at cutting off the ring.
“Andre can beat anyone technically but he can’t badly hurt you,” Carl Froch said to the Dailymail.co.uk.
I think Froch needs to sit down and re-watch his 2011 fight against Ward in the Super Six tournament, because Froch’s face was badly swelled up in that fight. Froch’s nose was swollen big time. I’ve seen Froch take a beating like that in any of his fights, including his fight against Andre Dirrell in 2009.
Froch looked in bad shape at the end of the Ward fight. Froch might say that Ward can’t hurt you, but I think the reality is much different judging by how beat up Froch looked.
If Smith, 32, doesn’t get knocked out by Ward on Saturday, he’s going to wind up with a likely torn up face, busted lip, busted up nose and some cuts over both eyes. I think Ward is going to turn Smith’s face to pizza by the end of it. I just hope for Smith’s sake that his trainer throws in the white towel of surrender when the beating gets too bad, because there’s no point in Smith staying out there to needlessly soak up punishment when he has zero chance of actually winning the fight. It would be in Smith’s best interest to save himself for other fights in 2015 rather than staying out there and taking a one-way beating.
Ward could be moving up to light heavyweight in the near future to get some big money against Sergey Kovalev, and whoever else he can fight. Ward has better chances of getting big money fighting at light heavyweight right now than he does at super middleweight, where none of the top guys want any part of him.
Comments are closed.