By Allan Fox: Andre “SOG” Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) says he’s not sure if he wants to continue his boxing career to fight former 175lb champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (30-1-1, 26 KOs) in a rematch. Ward says he’s been fighting 22 or 23 years, and he sees that as a long time. He’s not sure if he wants to continue fighting, and he says it has nothing to do with Kovalev.
Ward beat Kovalev by a controversial 12 round unanimous decision on November 19 last year. That was a fight in which Ward was getting worked over by Kovalev in the first two rounds of the fight.
Ward then turned the fight into a wrestling match from round 3 until round 12, and the referee let him get away with it without taking points off for his mauling. To hear Ward talk about the fight, you would think that he out-punched Kovalev in the last nine rounds of the fight rather than him turning the fight into a prolonged wresting fight.
If Ward retires without fighting Kovalev a second time, then a lot of boxing fans will think that he retired because he was afraid of him. Many of the fans will think that Ward lost his nerve, and wanted to get out of the sport before Kovalev or Artur Beterbiev both beat him. Many of the fans already think Ward was given a gift decision by the three judges that worked the Kovalev vs. Ward fight on November 19. The fans point out that all Ward did from the 3rd round on was hold and wrestle, and was allowed to do so without being disqualified for the excessive holding.
Ward said this to the boxing media about the possibility that he could retire:
“I don’t know. They don’t realize how long I’ve been doing this,” said Ward. “I’ve been doing this since I was nine years ago. That’s 22 or 23 years. Whether I continue or not, that’s still up in the air. I’ve got to figure some things out. It has nothing to do with Kovalev. They’ve got to realize I chose him. He didn’t choose me. He didn’t chase me down. I came to his weight class and knocked on his door. I think I showed from the 2nd round that there’s nothing scary about that guy,” said Ward.
If Ward does continue fighting, he’s going to have problems if he fights Kovalev or Beterbiev. If all Ward is going to do is pick and choose beatable fighters like Nathan Cleverly to fight, then he’ll be fine. Ward says he’s not particularly interested in fighting WBC champion Adonis Stevenson, because he sees a fight against him as a backwards move.
The thing is, Stevenson is viewed by a lot of boxing fans to be the second best fighter in the 175lb division. If Ward isn’t interested in fighting Stevenson, then it’s going to look weird if he doesn’t fight him or Kovalev. What’s the point of being a champion if Ward isn’t going to fight Kovalev or Stevenson again? He’s going to have to fight Beterbiev if he beats Sullivan Barrera in their fight in April, and there’s a good chance that it’ll be Beterbiev that wins that fight.
In speaking about whether he’d be interested in fighting WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson, Ward said, “I think Stevenson made some bad choices in the last two years. I’m not going backwards. He’s had two years to fight Kovalev. That fight would have to make sense. It doesn’t make sense to go backwards. Cleverly or whoever,” said Ward when asked if he’d be willing to fight Nathan Cleverly. “I said if I lose, they’re not going to give me the benefit of the doubt. If he [Kovalev] loses, he’s going to have a soft place to land. So that’s what’s happening now. That’s why he won’t beat me, because he’s gotten the benefit of the doubt. So that mentality he needed to have when I got back up and looked him in the eye and said, ‘Come on, bring it.’ He didn’t have it. He wasn’t like this, because he didn’t have that mentality. Me knowing they’re not going to give me the benefit of the doubt, I got to have it. That drove me, drove me and drove me. That’s why he won’t beat me in the future, because the right thing for him to do right now is for him to say ‘I think I won, but let me go back to the drawing board and figure out what happened not making excuses.’ Anybody around him, and I know this because I’m doing my homework, anybody in his camp that says they think he lost, he tries to get rid of them. He doesn’t want to hear anything. Therefore, he’s not going to get better. He brings the same guys to the second fight. In my opinion, he’s going to be worse. I have to hear it, and he doesn’t have it and he’s not going to get it at 33-years-old,” said Ward.
I think Ward underestimating Kovalev. Of course, Kovalev is looking to improve himself for the rematch with Ward. He’d be crazy not to want to improve. The only thing that Kovalev needs to improve on is his inside wrestling skills or how to negate Ward’s wrestling skills.
That’s the main thing that Kovalev has to worry about, because Ward is almost certainly going to turn the rematch into a wrestling match rather than a fight. I think it’s a given that Ward is going to go back to the same playbook he used in the first fight with him grappling with Kovalev.
If Kovalev has improved with his own grappling skills, then Ward is going to have a really tough time if he chooses to take the rematch. Ward doesn’t have the boxing skills to beat Kovalev in a stand up fight in my opinion. The only thing Ward can do is to try and turn the fight into a wrestling match again and hope that the referee does nothing about it to police the fight, and he’s got to hope that Kovlalev doesn’t improve his own wrestling skills enough to beat him.
That’s why Ward needs to stay away from Beterbiev, because he’s a very good inside fighter that would likely knock Ward out on the inside if he tried to turn the fight into a grappling affair. Beterbiev is just too good on the inside. But I don’t think Ward is ever going to take that fight with Beterbiev in a million years. I see Ward retiring rather than fighting Beterbiev. Ward will have seen how good Beterbiev is on the inside, and I think he’ll want no part of fighting the Russian former two-time Olympian.
When asked whether he’ll fight Gennady Golovkin in the future, Ward said, “I don’t think so at this point. Before I moved up [to light heavyweight], that’s the fight I was trying to get. I’ll never go after a smaller fighter. When I started reading something [From Golovkin saying], ‘I’ll fight anybody from 154 to 168,’ I said, ‘What? That’s my weight class.’ I then started asking questions about it. I made them an offer of 50-50 down the middle. I think 2015 we did this. ‘Maybe Golovkin wants to unify the division,’ [said Golovkin’s management]. ‘2017 or 2018 if all goes well.’ That’s the opposite of what they’re saying to the media. At this point, I just dusted my hands and went away. It just didn’t work out. I honestly think that fight should have happened before the Kovalev fight, and that wouldn’t have been an easy fight for either one of us because Golovkin is a great fighter. I just don’t think it’s going to happen at this point simply because of the weight difference,” said Ward.
Of course, Golovkin isn’t going to fight Ward right now. Golovkin is still trying to unify the 160lb division first. That means Golovkin has to beat Saul Canelo Alvarez, Daniel Jacobs and Billy Joe Saunders. It’s possible that Golovkin could have all three of those fights out of the way by 2018. If Ward is still around and hasn’t retired, then a fight between him and Golovkin could be possible by that point in time. I still don’t see it happening, but you have to say that it’s a possibility.
“I’d have been upset if I lost by one point, and there’s really nothing wrong in saying ‘I think I won the fight,’” said Ward about Kovalev. “Now he’s got to suck it up and get back and regroup because it’s not a good look. He’s showing so much weakness right now with those Instagram posts. I’m not going to respond to that. If the contract is right, let me assess it and see what it is, and then we’ll see if you really want it the way you say you want it. He’s after another payday, because he can’t get that payday with anybody else. That’s a fact. So of course he wants the fight again. He’s trying to get a check,” said Ward about Kovalev.