Ward vs. Brand – 9 days away

By Boxing News - 07/28/2016 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: Light heavyweight contender Andre Ward’s tune-up fight against #10 WBA Alexander Brand (25-1, 19 KOs) is little over a week away and very few boxing fans are talking about the Ward-Brand fight. Instead, the fans are discussing Ward’s scheduled fight against IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev, who Ward (29-0, 15 KOs) is supposed to be facing on November 19 if he beats Brand.

Ward vs. Brand will be taking place on August 6 at the Oracle Arena in Oakland. California. HBO Boxing will be televising it despite the fact that it’s considered to be a mismatch.

It doesn’t seem hardly fair to Brand that the fans are already counting him as a win for Ward and are talking now of the Ward vs. Kovalev fight. Brand has a real chance of winning this fight against Ward, because he’s better than the last two guys that Ward has fought.

Brand has a better inside game, and he could work Ward over when he gets in close on August 6. Ward may be forced to start holding to keep Brand from being able to get the better of him. If that happens, it’s going to be interesting to see if Brand can fight Ward off of him to get him to let go.

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Brand, 39, is seen as a body for Ward to beat to give him a sure thing win so that he can advance to the next fight against Kovalev, which will be televised on HBO PPV. Ward took a lot of shots in his last fight against Sullivan Barrera last March, so you can’t count out even someone like Brand. He’s got the kind of pinching power and high work rate that could give Ward a lot of problems in this fight. Brand may force Ward to revert to his holding style of fighting to keep from getting belted around the ring, because Ward doesn’t have the wheels any longer to move like he did in the past.

The mobility that Ward had has taken a hit. Ward, 31, isn’t old by any means, but he moves like he’s older and his reflexes don’t look as sharp. You have to remember that boxing great Muhammad Ali was a lot slower at 31 than he was in his 20s. I think we’re seeing the same thing with Andre Ward. He was never a blazing fast guy to begin with like Roy Jones Jr. and Floyd Mayweather Jr. War had good hand speed, but not the type where he could lose speed through aging and till be blazing fast. Ward also doesn’t have huge punching power to fall back on like someone in the Kovalev or Gennady “GGG” Golvokin

Many of the fight fans that are talking about Ward are viewing him from the angle of the fighter he once was five years ago rather than the fighter he is today. Since making his return to the ring return last year against Paul Smith in June, Ward hasn’t looked anything like the fighter that he was in the past. Many fans mistakenly believe Ward to be the same fighter he was, but the boxing experts realize that he’s not the same fighter he was. Trainers Freddie Roach and Abel Sanchez both have recognized the deterioration in Ward’s game, and they wonder whether he’ll be able to bring back the fighter that he was.

“Andre Ward should know already that it’s going to be a tough fight for him anyway, because Andre Ward knows what it takes to take the fight out of you,” said Roy Jones Jr. “He’s not going to try to make it anything. He’s going to make it any type of fight that he needs it to be to win. There’s no such thing as try. That’s what he’s going to do. Kovalev is a hell of a puncher. You have to fear him because of his power. Andre Ward is the type of guy that knows how to take a guy out of what he does best,” said Jones.

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As you can see, Jones seems to have already made up his mind that Ward is going to beat Kovalev. I think you can count Jones as one of the fans that doesn’t seem to realize how much Ward has lost from his game, because he’s talking about him as if he’s infallible and is the same fighter he once was. It’s going to be interesting to see Jones try and explain away a Ward loss to Brand or Kovalev.

I remember how everyone thought Jones was unbeatable once upon a time until he was knocked clean out by Antonio Tarver in 2004. The fans thought the loss was a fluke thing for Jones until he was knocked out by Glen Johnson in his very next fight. If the fans had seen Jones’ performance against Tarver in 2013, they would have recognized that Jones had lost something from his game and was no longer the Jones from the past. I think it’s the same thing with Andre Ward. Boxing fans and people like Jones haven’t come to terms with the fact that Ward isn’t the same fighter he once was, and he’s now very beatable. I won’t be surprised if he loses to Brand on August 6. I don’t give Ward any chance of beating Kovalev on November 19. I see that as a knockout loss for Ward, even if he chooses to hold all night long.