COMING BACK?
Andre Ward addresses rumours that he’s going to return, while explaining to Caryn A. Tate why his final fight was exactly that
Andre Ward responds to the rumours that he is set to return from retirement
ANDRE WARD has never been a conventional fighter or individual. From the way he carries himself outside the ring to his methods inside, he consistently perplexed those who tried to put their simplistic labels on him. While the California native was clearly talented, many in the sport had a hard time understanding exactly how he achieved the exceptional results that he did. Early on some tried to claim he was simply slick; but when he out-roughed the perpetually rugged Edison Miranda, that tag didn’t seem to fit. Some called him solely a spoiler; yet when he stopped light-heavyweight king Chad Dawson, or outfought the virtually out-fightable Carl Froch, it was clear one label wasn’t going to be enough.
The reason standard boxing tags didn’t fit Ward is because he was, as he describes it, formless. Interestingly, as a nine-year-old, his style was strictly that of a fighter, not a boxer, in other words: no sugar, all spice. “Back then we fought three one-minute rounds,” Andre explained to Boxing News. “We called them smokers. So you don’t have a lot of time to get in there and actually box and try to kinda mess around. You gotta get straight to it. So I would come out the corner and it would be both hands blazing. I would try to go in there and outwork the other guy and overwhelm him, and get a referee-stopped contest or get my hand raised.” Andre is always quick to give his coaches credit. His head trainer, Virgil Hunter, has guided him from day one, and Andre’s father, Frank Ward, was a former fighter himself who helped navigate his son’s early amateur career with Virgil. “My dad and Virg, they had the foresight to keep track of the amateur system. As I started to become a teenager, the points system was implemented and they knew it was gonna be more of a pick and poke type of situation, so my style started to evolve. I started boxing as a fighter, I evolved into a boxer, and then as I turned professional... virg would always tell me, ‘Son,
you’re a really great boxer, and the only thing that can beat you is a buzzsaw. So my job is to make you a physically strong boxer, and also teach you how to work inside.’
“So I evolved a third time, and became, really, formless. Somebody who could do whatever he needed to do in the ring. I could box on the outside, I could bang on the inside. If you wanted to get rough, I could get rough.”
Ward knows that his ability to implement a multitude of styles and combat techniques is built upon solid fundamentals. Not only did his trainers understand those fundamentals, Andre learned them in the appropriate order.
“I’m thankful that I have my father and Virg who were old-school coaches. They perfected the fundamentals. If you look at a lot of young coaches today, there’s some good ones out there, but I think today they coach hands first, and then feet. In other words, you see a lot of fancy mitt work, a lot of fancy shadow boxing. But the first thing Virg would always point to, he’d say, ‘Okay, that mitt work looks good, or that shadow boxing is flashy, but where are their feet?’ I’m like, ‘They’re in
place.’ He said, ‘There you go.’” ➤
I WISH THE FINISH WAS A LITTLE CLEANER BUT MAYBE ONE OF THOSE THREE SHOTS YOU COULD SAY WAS BODERLINE”
One could say that “S.O.G.” (“Son Of God,” in honour of his Christian faith) achieved all of the major feats a boxer can shoot for. He won an Olympic gold medal at light-heavyweight in 2004, turned professional later that year, and cleaned out the stacked supermiddleweight division when he dominated the Super Six World Boxing Classic tournament, winning two world titles in the process. In 2016, Ward moved up to 175lbs to twice defeat that division’s unified world champion Sergey Kovalev. After an exceptional 13 years as a pro, Andre retired in September 2017 with a record of 32-0 (16).
As a retired athlete, Ward is finally able to contemplate his career and all that he achieved over the years. “I’ve been really reflective. Probably the main thing I can take from my career is it just blows me away how disciplined me and my team have had to be over the years, the time we’ve had to put in, and the results we’ve been able to accomplish.”
Ward’s last two bouts, versus Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev, were some of the best of his career. Kovalev was regarded among the most fearsome fighters in the sport, and victories over the likes of Bernard Hopkins proved he could box intelligently too. For Ward, it was a taxing problem to solve. He won a close decision, riding out a second round storm along the way, before the Californian stopped Kovalev in eight rounds in Part II.
Ward spoke candidly about his final fight. “I think if we go back and listen to all the pre-fight commentary... I don’t mean this in a boastful way, but I have to say it: We called it.
“After the first fight... obviously I want to blow everybody out and win by 10 rounds and knock him out, but that’s just not a reality. The first Kovalev fight is probably one of my favorite fights because I had to win in a way that I never had to win before. I never had to come from behind like that. And I knew that for me to be able to get off the canvas in the second round with a guy with a reputation like that, who’s supposed to have all the punching power, and for me to take it to him, for him to not be able to do anything about it, and to get back in the fight the way that I did? I knew I unlocked something. It wasn’t just tactically, I knew in his heart, like I knew this dude... even when you get up to a certain point in a fight where maybe you’re gassed out, you have a certain grit about you. He didn’t have that. So I took a mental note of that.”
Recently, Ward revealed on social media that he is working on a documentary. He provided one nugget from the film as it pertains to the Kovalev bouts. “The first fight, as you guys will see in this documentary, I was lucky to get to the fight from a physical standpoint. The second training camp, we went back to our roots, man, and I had a tremendous camp. Just physically, I felt great, I was happy, I was hungry, I had a lot of critics to silence. I just had way too much motivation.
“I expected him to be better [the second time],” Andre continued. “I respected him going in, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and I said, ‘Look, he’s gonna be on another level. Everything that he’s saying, I’m taking him at his word.’ That allowed me to go in with the right mindset.”
Andre addressed the difference between Kovalev being in the fight, and actually winning rounds.
“He was competitive for the first six or seven rounds. Now, I don’t agree with some of the scores that were out there. Being objective, out of eight rounds, I would probably say five rounds to three
WHEN I RETIRED IT WAS SINCERE. I’M WORKING ON STAYING FIT, BUILDING MY BODY UP. IT’S IN MY NATURE TO STAY READY”
for me, maybe six-two.”
Ward described the final moments of the fight, when he landed a superb right hand upstairs that triggered the finish.
“We had Kovalev right where we wanted him,” Andre said. “The right hand landed, I came off the ropes, he relaxed for a split second, and I stepped in, and boom! He did a funny dance.
“Bottom line, I’m thinking, I got him, and I can’t let him off the hook! And the second thing I was thinking was, Please don’t let the bell ring! I didn’t know I had as much time as I had. When I watch the finish there’s probably times when I could’ve paused for a second, kinda let the punishment sink in, and then went back to work. In hindsight, that’s what I saw. But in my mind [at the time], I thought I had maybe 45 seconds to a minute. And that’s why I kinda jumped on him the way I did.”
Following the stoppage, Kovalev complained that Ward had landed low blows throughout the contest, despite referee Tony Weeks ruling them legal shots based on Kovalev’s high trunks. Looking back on film of the fight, it’s hard to deny some of Ward’s punches strayed below the border, but it’s even harder to prove any intent.
“I wish the finish was a little cleaner, but, you know, maybe one of those three shots you could say was borderline,” Ward admitted. “But the thing is this, he didn’t get stopped on low blows,. He quit.
“I think if anybody looks at that objectively they would say, ‘He quit.’ The man’s name is ‘Krusher.’ He had this menacing reputation, and the school of boxing that I come from is if somebody’s doing something to you in a boxing ring that you don’t like, and the referee’s not intervening, you have to selfpolice the situation, and you go and do what you have to do. He didn’t want to be in the ring anymore,” Ward said. “We sealed the deal, and the rest is history.” Watch the fight again and, as early as the fourth round, Kovalev starts turning his back. That act was not lost on Ward. “When he first turned his back, that was the beginning of the end right there,” Andre said. “That’s a no-no. You just can’t do that. It speaks volumes. And I didn’t jump on him, and Virg got mad at me about it. He said, ‘Man, don’t you ever let him off the hook like that!’ But I knew in my mind that [Kovalev] was looking for an out. And if he turns his back, and I leap in and hit him with a hook or hit him somehow and it lands behind the head and he goes down, now we have a whole other controversy. He’s gonna roll on the ground and play dead. And I didn’t want to give him that. “That’s why I stepped back and looked at Tony Weeks and I’m like, ‘What you gonna do?’ And Weeks is like, ‘Fight! It’s a legal blow!’ And I went back to work. But I intentionally didn’t jump on him for those reasons. ‘Cause I was gonna have plenty of time to do what I needed to do. It was no rush.” Andre recently posted a photo of himself on social media, stating he now weighs 199lbs and that “we’re working on something special.” The boxing world wondered if Ward could be planning a return at heavyweight, with a fight against Tony Bellew rumoured. “When I retired, it was sincere,” Andre said, simply. “I’m working on staying fit, building my body up. It’s in my nature to stay ready, man, that’s just who I am.”