By Dan Ambrose:
If you ask WBO 140lb champion Adrien Broner who he thinks is the top guy in boxing, he’ll tell you right away he thinks it’s unbeaten light heavyweight Andre Ward (28-0, 17 KOs). Broner is sold on Ward as being the best considering his many years of dominating the 168lb division. However, Ward has not been very active in the last two years of his career, but Broner still thinks he is the best right now.
Ward will be facing his stiffest test of his career next year when he faces unbeaten IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev towards the end of 2016. That is a fight that many boxing fans feel that Ward will lose, because he doesn’t have the punching power that Kovalev possesses.
Broner still believes that Ward will find a way to win and will send Kovalev down to defeat.
“As of right now in boxing, it has to be Andre Ward,” Broner said to Fighthype about him believing that Ward is the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. “I have to give it to Andre Ward. Look at all he’s done. He’s beaten everybody in his weight class. They just treat him bad. I don’t think he’s givn the best publicizing. He should because he’s an amazing fighter. He’s someone I look up to,” Broner said.
When asked who he thinks will win the Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev fight, Broner said “He’ll [Ward] beat him. He always finds a way to win.”
It is difficult to say that Ward is the best fighter on the planet right now, because his career has rather stalled out since he won the Super 6 tournament in 2011. Ward was fighting on a regular basis up to that point, but after he won the tournament, Ward has only fought three times in the last four years. That is less than one fight per year. That is not nearly enough to be considered a relevant fighter in my view.
Ward has beaten these fighters since 2011:
Chad Dawson
Edwin Rodriguez
Paul Smith
While the wins over Rodriguez and Dawson were good victories for Ward, you cannot count his win over Paul Smith as being a meaningful win for him, because twice WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham had recently beaten Smith. James DeGale and George Groves had also knocked out Smith. Therefore, what we are really talking about here with Ward is a fighter who has fought two meaningful fights in the last four years.
That is not enough for me to consider Ward as the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. If Broner is going to consider Ward as the best fighter in boxing for what he did in the distant past, then he should be calling Roy Jones Jr. as the best in the sport right now, because he has had a much better career than Ward.
If Broner is going to focus only on what fighters have done years ago rather than recently, then Jones Jr. is the best right now. I rate Jones’ career as a more productive and more dominating one than Ward’s career.
I see the pound-for-pound ratings going like this:
1. Gennady Golovkin – Champion
2. Roman Gonzalez
3. Sergey Kovalev
4. Jermall Charlo
5. Tyson Fury
6. Grigory Drozd
7. Adonis Stevenson
8. Terence Crawford
9. Terry Flanagan
10. Takashi Uchiyama
The last five fighters in the pound-for-pound list are irrelevant because they are so far off the beaten track that they do not rate for discussion. However, my point is that inactive fighters like Ward should not rate for the pound for pound lists because he has been out of the loop for so long. Now if Ward defeats his next opponent Sullivan Barrera, and then beats Kovalev and Adonis Stevenson, then yes, I can say that Ward deserves to be the No.1 P4P fighter.
Until Ward does that, I do not think he rates to be on the list. Ward needs to be active and he needs to pick up some fine pelts to add to his collection before he is under consideration as the top dog in the pound for pound lists. Back in 2011, I thought Ward deserved to be on the pound for pound list because he was fighting regularly and had won the Super 6 tournament. Nevertheless, Ward has been resting on his laurels ever since the tournament ended and doing nothing.
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