by Liam Fitzgerald: I was unable to see the recent Super Six match up between Andre Ward (22-0, 13 KO’s) and Allan Green (29-2, 20 KO’s) live but was excited about seeing it after hearing rave reviews about his performance as well as the fact that he won 120-108 on every scorecard. What intrigued me most was how many people compared the technique he showed in the fight to that of a young Bernard Hopkins.

However, having watched the fight now, I’m really struggling to agree with this comparison. I can definitely see some similarities but I believe that it is still very premature to put the Super Six leader in the same bracket as the future Hall of Famer.

Firstly, I must say that I had been very impressed with Ward’s dominating performance over Mikkel Kessler. In that fight he threw some lovely combinations and mixed up his attack well to put the Dane off and comfortably beat him. However, the win has been put into context for me now after Kessler’s win over Carl Froch which didn’t impress me at all and left me thinking that the WBC champion is in fact a declining fighter. Yet I can not take away the strength of this win as it was really a big upset from a youngster fighting for a World title for the first time.

So therefore I was very excited for his next fight against Green. Clearly his fellow American was a massive underdog and in my mind the result was never in doubt. What I was looking for was an improvement on the Kessler performance. Yet though he was even more dominant, I believe that has a lot to do with Green’s weaknesses more than Ward improving. He seemed too wary of Green’s reputed power and so chose to work in very close to stop his opponent freeing his arms to let fly. True, it was effective and got him win but it rightly drew criticism from some fans who felt the win was ugly.

It would be true to analyse that in this aspect Ward’s win was similar to some of Hopkins’ performance in the past. What they both do well is to neutralise their opponent’s offence and as a result put them in control of the tempo and style of the fight. This led to some really poor fights to watch in Hopkins’ case as well, the one with Winky Wright springing to mind. However, in general Hopkins tended to bring an excitement to fights that Ward hasn’t yet done and which he may struggle to do in the future.

This may in part be down to personality. Hopkins is clearly an outspoken, volatile character who brings attention and publicity to his fights, whether negatively or positively. Ward’s personality has yet to shine through a great deal and he remains fairly unknown to casual boxing fans. Of course, he is still young and winning the Super Six would be massive to his status in boxing circles. And on the basis of the first 2 rounds of the tournament, he certainly seems the man most capable of doing so.

However, the reason that the tournament is enjoying so much success is because all of the fighters are very close in terms of ability. There is no stand out star and having started with 4 undefeated fighters, it seems unlikely that any of them will come out of the tournament wit h their ‘0’ intact. I think this because I believe the speed and agility of Andre Dirrel will be enough to make him the first man to beat Ward and thus get him into the semis. So in comparison with Hopkins, even though he is young, I doubt Ward will be able to dominate his weight division in the way the Executioner did during the 90’s- 00’s. Plus, the middleweight division in them years was stronger than 168lbs is now.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike Ward and have a lot of respect for his ability. I see him making the final of the Super Six and possibly winning it and if that happened he would clearly become a big star. However, what I don’t agree with is the comparisons with Hopkins who has fought some of the p4p best fighters in the world and won. Plus, his technical style of fighting was undoubtedly more exciting and intriguing to watch when beating men like de la Hoya, Trinidad, Tarver and Pavlik than Ward’s has been up to now. You never know if Ward wins the Super Six and has mega fights with Bute And Dawson, he could impress us all by nullifying their threat and winning but at this moment I don’t see him beating them type of fighters.