By Jim Dower: After seeing how much problems former WBA junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman had with his right knee in his fight with Miguel Cotto last Saturday night, I find myself concerned whether WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward’s injured right knee with hold up under him for a full 12 rounds against Allan Green in their Super Six tournament fight on June 19th, at the Oracle Arena, in Oakland, California. Green injured his knee previously playing basketball.

Ward’s knee was then successfully operated on and the problem fixed. However, after fighting well with the knee in wins over Edison Miranda and Mikkel Kessler, Ward injured his knee a second time while training for his previously scheduled April 24th fight with Green. The fight had to be postponed after Ward’s knee swelled up on him during training. Ward has since taken things slowly, rehabilitating his knee while training for the Green fight.

However, it makes you wonder whether Ward’s knee will be ready for a tough fight against Green on June 19th. It’s not normal for a knee to swell up months after surgery. This leaves me with the impression that Ward may have tore some additional cartilage in the knee. It’s probably not going to be as strong as it was before the injury and even with a knee brace, there’s a chance that Ward could tweak the knee during the Green bout and end up fighting on one leg much in the same way that Foreman was fighting with one leg from the 7th to the 9th rounds.

In looking at Ward’s recent 11 round technical decision win over Kessler last November, I noticed that Ward puts a lot of stress on his knees with his lunging attacks. And that’s all well and good if you have two good knees, but in this case I don’t know if Ward is going to be able to fight in the same way against Green without possibly re-injuring the knee.

Obviously, Ward didn’t have time to have his leg scoped by the doctor because the surgery would require a lengthy amount of rehabilitation time involved. But I wonder whether Ward will be fighting with a leg that has partially torn cartilage floating around that could possibly cause him problems in that fight. Speaking from experience, I had one of my knees scoped years ago and even with a massive amount of rehabilitation, my knee is nowhere near as strong as it once was. I could see how it would be a problem if I was to have to put a lot of stress on it for a fight like the one that Ward has coming up with Green. Ward could be fighting with only one strong leg, even if his knee doesn’t give out on him again.