Virgil Hunter, who was the career trainer for Andre Ward (32-0, 16 KOs), says there is no way that his boxer can be remembered as nothing short of being a great fighter.
Last month, Ward - at age 32 - announced his retirement from boxing.
At the time of his retirement, the Olympic gold medal winner was rated by most as the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world and he held the IBF, WBA, WBO light heavyweight titles.
In his last fight, Ward retained his three titles with a stoppage victory in his rematch with Sergey Kovalev back in June.
Besides his belts at 175, Ward dominated the super middleweight division by racking up titles and beating such names as Carl Froch, Chad Dawson, Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Sakio Bika, Edwin Rodriguez, Allan Green and Edison Miranda.
Throughout his career, Ward had more than his fair share of critics.
But according to Hunter - even the critics who hated his style of fighting, and downplayed some of his wins, would still have to admit that he's a great fighter.
"If they’re going to be honest with themselves, they have to remember him as a great fighter. What he’s done you can’t take it away from him. You can argue against it, you can point fingers here and there like we can do with every single fighter’s career. We can do that on every single fighter, but the bottom line is that he did it his way and the way that we planned it is the way it turned out," Hunter told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.
"To have a young man come to you at nine years old and want to box, to lay out all the things that you wanted to accomplish. I have a diary that I started when he was eleven and every single thing I predicted in this diary I had completed it before he was seventeen. Every single thing, from the broadcasting to the gold medal, to the middleweight championship, I predicted it and it came true. I wouldn’t have had it any other way, and to be able to say that I never saw him lose a fight, I never saw him hurt in a fight, that’s a great accomplishment. The memories will always be those of a winner."