Andre Ward vs. Paul Smith this Saturday, June 20th on BET

By Boxing News - 06/14/2015 - Comments

ward56By Scott Gilfoid: The super middleweight division’s best fighter Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KOs) will be fighting this Saturday night in a fight televised on BET against the serviceable Paul Smith (35-5, 20 KOs) at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California. Smith won’t be fighting or Ward’s WBA super middleweight title because the fight will take place at a catch-weight of 172 pounds.

There’s little chance that Ward will be beaten in this fight because Smith doesn’t have punching power, and he’s quite slow and not someone that is going to be able to get his shots off fast enough to bother Ward. Smith, 32, is obviously not a great opponent, but Ward needed a body to face for him to get the rust out.

I would have liked to have seen Ward fight someone a couple levels above Smith in the talent department because this fight is going to be too one-sided for Ward to get anything from it. When a fighter comes back from a long layoff like Ward, he needs someone at least halfway talented to get the rust out in a proper way, but that’s not what we’re going to see in this fight.

Smith is basically coming into the fight as a sacrificial lamb that is about to be slaughtered by Ward.

In Ward’s last fight, he defeated Edwin Rodriguez in November of 2013. It’s hard to believe that all that time has gone by since Ward took that fight, but you can’t blame him for not fighting because he had promotional problems.

Smith doesn’t have the talent to present any real problems for a fighter as talented as Ward. Smith lost his last two fights against WBO Arthur Abraham. There was a rematch between the two fighters last February due to Smith complaining about being robbed in his first defeat to Abraham last year in September. I saw the fight and had Abraham winning 10 rounds to 2. No way did Smith deserve a rematch.

For Ward, 31, this is the beginning of him getting busy once again with his career after taking a go slow approach in making fights after winning the Super Six tournament in 2011. Ward has only fought twice since then. A big part of Ward not fighting was due to promotional problems. Another part is that none of the top fighters were willing to face him.

Instead of just staying busy in fighting the contenders that were willing to fight him, Ward fought rarely. His only two fights since he whipped Carl Froch in 2011 were against Chad Dawson and Edwin Rodriguez. Those were two very fine fighters, but Ward needed to fight at least three times a year, and he’s not done that.

I don’t expect Ward to get any of the top super middleweights to face him in 2015 or 2016. Ward’s best bet to get a big money fight is if he moves up to light heavyweight and looks to fight Adonis Stevenson and Sergey Kovalev. Ward has made it clear that he doesn’t want to move up to light heavyweight because after he fights Kovalev and Stevenson, there won’t be anyone else for him to fight. But that shouldn’t keep Ward from moving up to 175 for one or two big fights so that he can get some good paydays. It’s better to move up to light heavyweight temporarily than it is to stay at 168 and fight down in their luck fighters like Paul Smith.



Comments are closed.