By Scott Gilfoid: Mikkel Kessler’s time at the top has past and he’s now about to meet his better in the young 25-year-old Andre Ward (20-0, 13 KO’s) on November 21st at the Oracle Arena, in Oakland, California in their Super Six tournament fight. Kessler looked ripe for another loss in last fight against Gusmyr Perdomo on September 12th 2009. Kessler’s ability to get out of the way of punches and his movement seemed badly degraded compared to his 2007 form.

If this was a slower fighter with more limited boxing skills that Kessler was facing, like Carl Froch, then I think Kessler would have no problems getting through the fight with what he has left in the tank. However, Ward is a young 25, and appears to be at the prime years of his career, whereas Kessler seems old for a 30-year-old in comparison.

Ward’s trainer, Virgil Hunter, has this to say about Kessler: “Kessler is a good fighter and he is very good at what he does, but there has been no evidence of Kessler coming out of the box,” in an interview at The Sweet Science boxing site. Indeed, Kessler doesn’t move well with his feet, especially lately in his last fight, and seems a touch slow in getting around the ring.

Hunter notices that Kessler makes the mistake of fighting with two wide of a stance, something which he feels limit’s the range of Kessler’s punches. I’ve been noticing this myself in watching old fights of Kessler’s. He stands with his feet way too wide and he’s slow to react when his opponents show any kind of movement against him. Take, for example, Kessler’s fight Joe Calzaghe in 2007.

Calzaghe used a lot of different angles in his attacks of Kessler and had him thoroughly confused and off balance much of the time with his attacks. At the same time, Calzaghe poured in a ton of punches and basically overwhelmed Kessler’s defense. Kessler is kind of limited when multi tasking, I noticed and seems to do much better when facing opponents that throw only one punch at a time.

Kessler also had problems to a certain extent against Librado Andrade with his swarming attack. Although Kessler totally dominated the fight, if you watch if over again you’ll notice that Kessler was hit over and over again throughout the fight when Andrade was throwing combinations. Kessler showed no defense for a left hand from Andrade, Perdomo or Calzaghe.

That’s not good news given that Kessler will be facing Ward, a southpaw whose best punch is his left hand. Kessler may be able to make some corrections and protect a little better, but he won’t be able to fix his poor defense enough to the point where he’ll beat Ward.

Kessler’s defense is too leaky to fix in the next three weeks and I see Kessler as being essentially the same fighter he was in the past, only worse because he appears to have lost a couple of steps in the past year with his time off from boxing. Some fighters age better than others unfortunately. Calzaghe was young at 30, but Kessler seems much older and even looks a lot older than a typical 30-year-old in my view.

Ward is going to overwhelm Kessler with his speed, movement and youth on November 21st. However, Ward is going to show a wrinkle that he’s not given much credit for and that’s with his power. Ward will punish Kessler all night long with power shots and hurt him. I see this fight ending up much like Ward’s bout with Edison Miranda, a fight in which Ward boxed circles around the slower Miranda en route to beating him by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in May 2009. Kessler will do no better than Miranda against Ward.

In fact, I see Kessler having even bigger problems against Ward because Kessler won’t have the movement to catch up to the much faster Ward. Kessler’s legs are old and he doesn’t have the hand speed or the weaponry to win this fight. Kessler also won’t have the judges to give him credit for rounds in which he’s getting out-landed in unlike another European fighter that I’ll leave unmentioned.