Andre Ward compares himself with Floyd Mayweather Jr

By Boxing News - 02/11/2016 - Comments

ward6By Dan Ambrose: Former WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) admits that he’s starting to slow down as a fighter in the ring now that he’s getting older at 31-years-old. Ward, who has fought only three times in the last five years, is facing one of the best light heavyweights in the division next month in fighting unbeaten Cuban Sullivan Barrera (17-0, 12 KOs) on March 26 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.

Ward sees himself in the same situation as Floyd Mayweather Jr. was in during the last part of his career after he moved up to the welterweight division. Mayweather didn’t/couldn’t move around the ring as he had when he was fighting at super featherweight, lightweight and light welterweight.

Mayweather had to be stationary compared to earlier in his career. While Mayweather says he intentionally stood in the pocket in order to please his fans, it was clear that he was forced to do it because his old legs could not move him around as they previously had.

“I think if a fighter stays in the gym, which we try to do year-round, I think you naturally start to evolve,” Ward said via RingTV.com. “And your game gets more and more seasoned where as you get older you get more efficient where there’s no unnecessary movement. And I think you saw that in Floyd’s career where he had a lot of movement at 135, 130, and when he went to 140 he settled down a little bit and then at 147 he was like that. Father time waits on no one. I just think naturally my game is evolving and I feel like I’m still in my prime and things are slowing down for me in the ring.”

It’s bad news that Ward has lost his ability to move around the ring now that he’s moved up to light heavyweight division. Without the punching power to trade with the bigger punchers in the 175lb division like Barrera, Adonis Stevenson, Sergey Kovalev, Artur Beterbiev and Andrzek Fonfara, Ward is going to need to fall back on either movement or grappling with them to keep from getting overpowered.

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Ward’s wrestling on the inside helped him beat big punchers like Carl Froch at super middleweight, but that technique might not work for him at light heavyweight. The fighters are stronger and more capable of beating Ward on the inside with wrestling. We saw Sakio Bika get the better of Ward in wrestling and fighting on the inside, and Bika isn’t as true light heavyweight. This took place at super middleweight. If Bika was able to get the better of Ward on the inside, then you can bet that Beterbiev, Kovalev, Barrera, Fonfara and Stevenson will be able to do the same.

“Though he [Barrera] may look bigger and may have bigger muscles, I think he’s going to realize that he’s not stronger,” Ward said about Sullivan Barrera. “And I think he’s going to have to deal with speed that he never dealt with before and conditioning that he never dealt with before so there are adjustments that are going to have to be made on both sides.”

Ward is not a big puncher, and we saw that in his last fight against a flabby super middleweight Paul Smith in June of last year. Smith was clearly the better puncher of the two. The things that Ward had over Smith was better hand speed, punch accuracy and defense.



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