Ward need a Froch win to legitimize
Super Six
Mark E. Ortega
Leave-it-in-the-ring.com
May 17, 2011
When the Super Six World Boxing Classic
was first conceived at Showtime, the idea behind it was to crown more
than just one star, and ultimately build the tournament champion into
a crossover star that the network could champion in the coming years.
With last Saturday's lopsided victory
over former middleweight kingpin Arthur Abraham in the books, and the
second portion of the tournament final on the verge of being
determined on June 4th between WBC champion Carl Froch and
2005 “Ring Magazine Fighter of the Year” Glen Johnson, its an
immaculate time to take a look at how things have progressed and
where it could lead.
It's no secret to anyone that the Super
Six has had it's peaks and troughs, just as you would suspect any
innovation running for the first time would encounter. It's highs
have been a couple of high profile bouts in a division that, until
recently, has not seen many of those over its brief history.
Mikkel Kessler's razor-thin victory
over Carl Froch contained the most excitement as the two fought it
out in the center of the ring like it was a club fight rather than a
technical one much to the delight of the fans. The round robin has
seen a number of well promoted global events in Berlin, Nottingham,
and Oakland with capacity crowds in attendance as well as a couple of
shock results in the cases of Ward's one-sided win over Kessler for
the WBA title and Andre Dirrell's dissection of an undefeated
Abraham. As the tournament unfolds, however, one thing is for sure:
Andre Ward has the best chance of emerging from the inaugural run of
the Super Six as a major star.
So far, to his credit, Ward has done
his part. While not necessarily in the most crowd-pleasing of ways,
Ward has dominated a run of fighters that credential wise is
unmatched by any other super middleweight today. Still, there are
plenty of naysayers who question how well he would match up with IBF
168-pound champion Lucian Bute, who hangs in waiting for the winner
of the tournament following the inking of his multi-fight deal with
Showtime.
It is obvious to those who have covered
Ward closely in the past few years that he strives for a challenge.
Ward has made it clear that he wants to see Carl Froch in the
tournament finals as that is the opponent who would better help
establish himself as one of the sport's best young fighters.
In discussing the Froch-Johnson fight
Saturday, Ward was concise in pointing out how Johnson got to the
semi-finals.
“The thing about Johnson is we didn't
get a chance to see how his body responded at 168 pounds simply
because he fought a guy that he was comfortable with in Allan Green,
a former sparring partner,” said Ward in the post-fight press
conference. “That wasn't a torrid pace he fought at. It was a very
casual pace and then he ended up catching Green behind the head. A
lot of people said he looked great against Green and I don't take
anything away from him, but we're gonna see how that weight loss
really affects him when he fights Froch because it will be a higher
pace fight against a guy who doesn't respect him as much as Green
respected him, so we will see how he really looks in that fight.”
If Glen Johnson pulls off a miraculous
upset over Froch, it sets up detractors of Ward and of the entire
tournament up perfectly to tear them down. Put Johnson in the finals
and Ward's run to super middleweight supremacy will have been
against, in the opinion of the naysayers, the following fighters: A
faded Mikkel Kessler traveling on the road, a never-was in Allan
Green, a money grabbing Sakio Bika, an out of his weight Arthur
Abraham, and a 70-year old Glen Johnson.
Not the fairest assessment but it is
one you could expect to hear if that is how it plays out. All of that
would be a moot point if Ward met Lucian Bute immediately following
the wrap-up of the official finale, a fight that would be a fitting
cap on this imaginative [in theory] idea that Showtime came up with
nearly three years ago.
“I think its inevitable that me and
Froch should have a showdown,” lamented Ward. “He's been calling
for it, I think the fans here in the US want it, and the fans in
Great Britain want it. I think that would be an action packed fight
and it would be a live atmosphere in terms of fanfare.”
Ward is smart in knowing that the best
way to finish would be against Froch, who has never been soundly
beaten before and has quite an impressive run up to this point
himself. He holds wins over current WBC 175-pound champion Jean
Pascal, former undisputed middleweight champion Jermain Taylor and
former middleweight titleholder Abraham, and an undefeated Andre
Dirrell, albeit that one controversially. His one loss came in a
give-and-take battle with Kessler, a fight many felt Froch deserved.
All of these listed minus the Dirrell one were exciting or
intriguing, often both. Froch would give Ward the best chance to
shine against an all-action opponent. If Ward doesn't deliver a fun
fight against Froch, it's doubtful that he ever will.
There has been a lot of talk following
this weekend of Ward not being a fan friendly fighter. In the ring,
this writer would have to agree with that statement. But it is the
way Ward carries himself outside the ring and his mentality that
should make him attractive to any fight fan, as well as those who
don't follow the sport too closely.
Unlike some of the sport's previous
pound-for-pound fighters, Ward seems intent on taking on all
challenges without the aid of stipulations and determined to achieve
greatness. He wants a Froch fight because he assumes it would be more
difficult than a Johnson one, and more agreeable to the general
public. Even early in his career, Ward battled with writers who
failed to give him the credit he felt he deserved, and with each
fight Ward doesn't ease off on his willingness to look for more and
more challenges, including an opportunity down the line to pull a Roy
Jones, Jr. and win the heavyweight championship.
Outside the ring, Ward has conducted
himself with nothing but class. He's a good interview, so long as you
give him something to work with question-wise. He doesn't seem like
the type of fighter that will ever hold a fight up over catchweights
or similarly silly stipulations that have come into play with the
sport's elite over the past few decades.
The one caveat to Ward has been his
promoter Goossen Tutor's unwillingness to bring Ward on the road. He
has not fought out of his home state of California since 2007 with
four of his last six coming in his home base of Oakland.
In beating Abraham, Ward proved he can
handle hostile territory. The fight took place in Southern
California's Carson at the Home Depot Center. The Armenian
contingency was in full support of Abraham as the crowd was split
70-30 or so in favor of the German based fighter. Not only did Ward
have the Armenians against him, but quite a number of loyal Southern
Californians who would never willingly cheer on a Northern
Californian like Ward.
Early in the fight Wards was
experiencing problems with Abraham's aggressiveness and many in press
row had him losing the first three rounds. Ward then proceeded to
take the crowd out of the fight by picking apart the opposition and
winning every remaining round except for maybe the twelfth. It wasn't
exactly high drama but when you fight at the highest level the sport
has to offer, winning nearly every round is an impressive feat.
“It was fun, it was a lot of fun,”
said Ward in response to fighting a hostile crowd. “I look at one
of my favorite fighters in Floyd Mayweather, he's 40-0, he's fought
the best and in a lot of different circumstances. I watched his fight
with Ricky Hatton when he fought in Las Vegas and I looked at his
composure I looked at how he stayed the course even though it was a
rugged fight, it was a tough fight early on. Literally everybody was
against him and he found a way to get it done. I wasn't going to be
deterred tonight by the Armenian flags, the German flags, I had a job
to do. You gotta prove as a champion that you can win under many
different circumstances. I know that I could perform under any
circumstances but it was good to let the people know I could perform
under circumstances like this.”
The Showtime contract states the
tournament final will take place in the United States, which is a
shame. This has been a worldwide event and if Ward and his team want
to make a bigger star out of him, taking him to Nottingham to fight
Froch would be the way to go. It obviously would not be the smartest
mode as evidenced by Andre Dirrell's controversial loss to Froch in
the first stage of the tournament would indicate.
But it would go a long way in
establishing Ward as someone to champion as a boxing fan,
disregarding his lack of an excitable fighting style. Ward's
marketability lies within his eagerness to be great, and that is what
will shine through when all is said and done.
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