By Scott Gilfoid: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward’s June 20th fight against England’s Paul Smith (35-5, 20 KOs) will be taking place at a catch-weight of 172 pounds, according to boxing news from Boxrec.
Ward hasn’t fought in over a year so it’s quite understandable that he would want the fight to be a few pounds over the 168 pound limit. The fight will only be four pounds over the limit. Ward can still make super middleweight, but you don’t want to push the guy when he hasn’t fought in 17 months since his last fight in November of 2013 against Edwin Rodriguez. That’s a year and a half since Ward last fight.
The Ward-Smith fight will be take place at the Oracle Arena, in Oakland, California, USA.
Ward will obviously be easing himself back into the super middleweight division slowly rather than him having to work hard and potentially strip off valuable muscle weight in getting back to 168.
While some boxing fans think that Ward should simply move up to the light heavyweight division so that can fight guys like Sergey Kovalev, Adonis Stevenson and Artur Beterbiev at that weight, Ward isn’t as heavy as those guys, and he would find himself at a disadvantage every time he fought in facing guys that big. It doesn’t make sense for Ward to be battling huge fighters that have a weight advantage over him. That’s why he’s going to be staying at 168.
It’s too bad that the sanctioning bodies don’t create another division at 172 pounds for fighters that are having a problems making 168 but who are too small to be fighting at light heavyweight at 175. Guys like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., Andre Ward, Lucian Bute, Callum Smith and George Groves would be perfect for this division due to their size.
Ward will be making his first fight with Roc Nation Sports and he hopes to have a lot of big fights under their guidance. Ward was hoping to get a shot against Carl Froch, but the British fighter and his promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport wanted Ward to come all the way over to the UK to fight in Nottingham, the home city of Froch.
While Ward was on board with fighting in the UK, he wasn’t keen on fighting in Froch’s home city. This is the same place where American contender Andre Dirrell found himself losing a controversial decision in 2009. Ward didn’t say why he wanted no part of fighting Froch in Nottingham, but you can imagine that he might not want to find himself in the same boat as Dirrell did. I mean, it’s not as if Froch has bent over backwards to rush out to offer Dirrell chances of rematches 24/7. It’s been six years and yet Dirrell still hasn’t had a chance to avenge the questionable decision.
Smith has lost his last two fights against WBO strap holder Arthur Abraham. About the best thing you can hope for with Smith as Ward’s opponent is that he can maybe give Ward some rounds
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