Green blames defeat to Ward on weight problems

By Boxing News - 06/20/2010 - Comments

Image: Green blames defeat to Ward on weight problemsBy Jason Kim: Allan Green (29-2, 20 KO’s) brought up his weight as a partial excuse for his one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (22-0, 13 KOs) on Saturday night in their Super Six tournament fight in Oakland, California. Green was never in the fight, and was roughed up and pounded by the stronger, quicker, more aggressive Ward. The judges scored every round to Ward, giving him the fight by the scores of 120-108, 120-108 and 120-108.

After the fight, Green said “Andre Ward fought a hell of a fight. I weighed in at 166 [talking about his weight during the weigh-in on Friday]. By the time I got in the ring, I felt dead.” It’s hard to buy that excuse because much of Green’s problems in the fight seemed to derive from the mental mistakes he was making rather than the weight. He never tried to establish his jab in any real weight, despite having the longer reach compared to Ward.

Again and again, Green would allow Ward to bull him to the ropes and pound his body for extended periods of time. Having been a pro for a long time, Green should have known how to spin off the ropes to prevent being pinned there. He also shouldn’t have stayed on the ropes for so long. That was a really poor way of fighting and it didn’t suit Green very well. Green clinched far too often. It looked like he was just trying to slow Ward down, but he would have been better off using his legs and moving while throwing shots.

Perhaps the biggest mental mistake Green made in the fight was not throwing enough punches to win. Green just couldn’t pull the trigger on his punches. He wasn’t initiating the action and instead was the one reacting to everything. But he wasn’t throwing enough punches back at Ward to keep him off of him. Green needed to be throwing a lot more punches than he did, but for some reason he just couldn’t let his shots go. Green looked like he was afraid of throwing punches for feat of being countered.

He might as well have thrown the shots, because was getting hit anyway so it really didn’t matter all that much. Green looked at his best in the 1st round when he had energy and was looking confident. This changed quickly in the 2nd round when Ward began to smother Green on the inside. This pattern continued for the remainder of the fight without Green making any adjustments.



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