By Dan Ambrose: WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) is reportedly close to confirming for the November 21st Miguel Cotto – Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, according to ESPN Deportes. The Cotto-Canelo fight will be televised on HBO pay-per-view. Ward, 31, will be in the co-feature bout against an opponent still to be determined in a 10 round fight.
The name that is floating around as Ward’s potential opponent is Australian Rohan Murdock, a fighter ranked #6 by the WBO at 168. However, it could wind up being someone else entirely. The opponent is “not class A,” according to ESPN Deportes.
This is supposed to be a warm-up fight for Ward to get ready to start facing light heavyweights. This will be Ward’s first fight of his three-fight contract with HBO, and it looks like they’re going to allow him to take a soft opponent in his first fight of the contract. Ward already had a tune-up fight against Paul Smith last June in a non-HBO fight, but it looks like he wants to get another easy one because he’s fought so rarely in the last four years.
It’ll be surprising if HBO lets Ward have another soft fight in his 2nd fight of his contract, because they’re going to want to get value for the contract and not simply let Ward pad his record. Ward’s third fight is supposed to be against IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev. That’s why it would be in Ward’s best interest to have his next two fights against quality light
heavyweights rather than facing a super middleweight with an inflated record like Murdock and whoever else Ward’s promoters at Roc Nation Sports dig up for him. HBO will need to approve Ward’s opponents, and he’s not a big enough name for him to pick and choose soft opponents like Floyd Mayweather Jr did in four of his fights in his six-fight contract with Showtime/CBS.
The Cotto-Canelo card would be better off if Ward faces a good opponent because it’s not going to be enough just to have him facing a weak opponent if they want to be able to attract PPV buys by having him on the card. I’m not sure that the Cotto vs. Canelo fight is going to be as big as Canelo’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya thinks it will be. Neither of these guys is recognized as being the best fighters in the 160lb division.
Cotto, the WBC middleweight champion, won’t even fight at the full weight for the division. He beat an aging 39-year-old, gimpy-kneed Sergio Martinez for the WBC title at a catch-weight. Cotto then defended the title at a catch-weight against Daniel Geale last June. And now Cotto is about to defend his WBC title at a catch-weight fight at 155lbs against Canelo.
The boxing fans don’t see Cotto and Canelo as the real thing. They’re just fighting at catch-weight to gain advantage over their opponents. Canelo was already soundly beaten by Floyd Mayweather Jr, and had two controversial wins in the last couple of years against Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara.
Ward stopped Paul Smith in the 9th round last June. It was Ward’s first fight in the past two years. Ward is said to have wanted two tune-up fights, so his next fight should be his last tune-up. If he needs more than two tune-ups, then it’ll be up to HBO if they want to pay for that kind of thing.
Ward is interested in facing middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, but he wants him to come up to super middleweight at 168 for the fight to happen. Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions aren’t interested in doing that. They want to finish up at middleweight by winning all the world titles in that weight class and exhausting all the potentially big fights there is.
Ward is going in a different direction in moving up to light heavyweight. If/when Golovkin does move up to super middleweight in the future, Ward will need to come down to 168 to fight him, because it’s unlikely that Golovkin will follow Ward up to light heavyweight to take that fight. Golovkin is a small middleweight at 170lbs, and it would be crazy for him to move up to light heavyweight to fight the bigger guys in that weight class.
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