By Edward Chaykovsky
Virgil Hunter, trainer of Olympic gold medal winner Andre Ward (29-0, 15KOs), believes his fighter is receiving unfair criticism over the selection of Alexander Brand for their upcoming return on August 6th at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.
Ward is already contracted to face WBO/IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (29-0-1, 26KOs) on November 19th at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Kovalev also has to retain his titles on July 11th against Isaac Chilemba in Russia.
Ward was originally scheduled to face Brand last November as part of the HBO Pay-Per-View undercard to Miguel Cotto vs. Saul Alvarez. The fight fell through after Ward suffered an injury in training camp and was forced to withdraw.
Hunter says Brand is way better than the opponent Gennady 'GGG' Golovkin faced in April - Dominic Wade. Golovkin blew out Wade in two easy rounds to retain the IBO/IBF/WBA/WBC titles, but had little choice in facing him due to Wade's status as the IBF mandatory challenger.
Hunter says they also wanted to fight Golovkin when GGG and his handlers were struggling to find a formidable opponents, but those discussions never went anywhere because Roc Nation's advances to make that fight were rejected.
"I don't know why people would say anything because the ones who they say have a hard time getting an opponent, we're willing to fight them. Kovalev got a fight with Chilemba because they're promoted by the same company, but he didn't have nobody to fight. This kid Joe Smith, who knocked out Fonfara, he would've been a good fight, but we wouldn't have been able to get him because of Joe DeGuardia's lawsuit against Roc Nation. So who are we going to fight? Alexander Brand is way more formidable than Dominic Wade. We were willing to fight the other guy [Golovkin] when he didn't have nobody to fight, but they didn't wanna fight," Hunter explained to Ben Thompson of Fighthype.com.
Because of the contract terms with Kovalev's promoter, Main Events, there was a short amount of time remaining for Ward to stage his interim-fight. After several other possibilities fell through, Ward's back was against the wall to finalize a fight. Other options like Nathan Cleverly, Erik Skoglund and several others fell through for one reason or another.
"There was nobody left. We had to get somebody. They kept putting pressure on us for a deadline and this and that; [Brand] wasn't our first choice. We couldn't get an opponent last time, but we went to Barrera. He was the only one. Look, the time before last, when we had a layoff, we come out of the garage at 168 and we fought number one, Edwin Rodriguez. Next time, as a light heavyweight, we come out of the garage and we fight number one, Barrera. So what are they saying?," Hunter said.
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