By Allan Fox: After nearly two years of inactivity, WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (27-0, 14 KOs) returns to the ring on Saturday night to fight Paul Smith (35-5, 20 KOs) at a catch-weight of 172 pounds at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
Ward is 31 now, and he hasn’t fought since 2013 when he beat Edwin Rodriguez by a 12 round unanimous decision. Ward has fought only twice in the past four years since winning the Super Six tournament in 2011.
To say that Ward wasted those four years is an understatement. If Ward had stayed busy and fought three times per year against anyone, he would have fought at least 10 times in the last four years instead of just 2 times. You can only wonder how much money Ward lost by failing to stay active.
The Ward-Smith fight won’t likely be a competitive affair, as Ward is a much better fighter than Smith, and it’s not a fight would be competitive even if Ward has lost a huge part of his game due to inactivity. But the fight will show how much Ward has left in the tank. It’ll show the deterioration, if any, and let boxing fans know what they can expect from Ward in the future.
It’s important for Ward to look good in this fight because he’s getting his feet wet for a potential move up in weight to the 175 pound division so that he can face guys like Sergio Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson. Those two fights are Ward’s best chance of getting big money fights in the near future.
If Ward only chooses to fight at 168, he’ll find himself sitting and waiting for potentially a long period of time before he can get fights against James DeGale and George Groves. With Carl Froch essentially done with boxing, Groves and DeGale are now the big names at 168 in terms of having large fan bases in the UK, and those are the guys that Ward needs to fight if he wants to get a big payday. However, it’s unlikely that either of those fighters will elect to fight Ward anytime soon.
That means that unless Ward is content with just fighting the normal contenders at 168, he has to move up to 175 to get fights against Kovalev or Stevenson if he wants to get a big payday. Kovalev is someone that Ward can likely face next year. Stevenson is probably not going to happen for Ward because Stevenson hasn’t shown the desire to take on the tough opponents thus far.
Ward’s popularity has really plummeted since he captured the Super Six tournament in 2011. After the tournament, Ward had a lot of fans and he was well respected. But by not staying busy, by not taking a fight against Lucian Bute that was there for him at the time, Ward lost a lot of fans. He’s kind of been forgotten by fans because he’s been out of the picture for so long. The fight against Paul Smith on Saturday won’t do much to make fans remember Ward because it’s not a big enough fight. It’s also being televised by BET rather than a popular channel like NBC, CBS, ESPN, Showtime or HBO.
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