By Cliff Rold (photo by Laura De La Torre/FightWireImages)
It was easy to surmise 26-year old 2004 U.S. Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medalist and reigning WBA Super Middleweight titlist Andre Ward (22-0, 13 KO) doesn’t like to lose fights. He has not seen an “L” in over a decade going back to the amateurs.
It’s becoming apparent in the “Super Six” Super Middleweight tournament that Ward doesn’t even like to lose rounds.
Fighting aggressively from bell to bell, Ward outworked and outmuscled 30-year old challenger and Tulsa, Oklahoma native Allan Green (29-2, 20 KO) for a unanimous decision in front of a hometown crowd at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California on Saturday night.
Despite still having another preliminary contest, Ward has guaranteed a slot in the semi-finals of the highly touted tournament as the only fighter with two wins in the competition. Green, who entered as a replacement for former Middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, moves on to the third round likely needing not just a win but a knockout win to have a hope of advancing. Ward acme into the contest just below the division’s 168 lb. limit at 167 ¾, Green two under at 166.
As they waited for the opening bell, Green cut a swaggering pace back and forth while Ward bounced on his toes, eyes locked across the ring. Setting his feet, Ward began to lean forward, his left foot toeing closer and closer to the middle of the ring and then the bell clanged.
The final second round bout of the “Super Six” was underway and the suspense of those moments evaporated through each ensuing round.
Ward popped forward with his left jab and then began to circle to his left, Green coming forward and snapping his own lead left. A right hand attempt measured the distance and Ward cautiously and deliberately continued to move. An attempted Ward jab to the body missed and Ward clinched; they were separated and the same sequence played out again. Holding his right hand to his face tightly, Ward blocked a testing left hook from Green and it wasn’t long before another clinch ensued. And then another, marked with a Green left uppercut to the body in the clinch and Ward with a short left hook to the head. The round closed with Ward falling short on a jab and Green missing counter right as Ward leaned away.
The Ward jab was again the first attempted blow in round two but an exchange of single stiff body shots followed. They went inside, grappling and digging, and referee Raul Caiz Sr. quickly ordered them apart. Following more inside work, both men were warned for straying low with their shots, Green getting the brunt of the warning. A Ward lead right in the final minute glanced off the face of Green and the challenger responded with a muffled left hook. Ward landed a right seconds before the bell in another tense if not overly violent frame.
They were clinching and hooking almost immediately in round three, the fight carrying the look of old black and white footage from the turn of the twentieth century, all holding and hitting with Ward using Green’s body to create leverage for his shots. Bulling Green into the ropes, Ward opened up more, digging left hooks and blasting with a right hand. Ward stayed on top of him, Green responding with unbalanced hooks and uppercuts while Ward cranked with full force. Green gave his corner a thumbs-up at the bell but it was Ward who had clearly advanced on the scorecards in the round.
Green tried a right over the top and a left hook, both missing, as round four got underway. Pushing Ward off of him in a clinch at mid-ring, Green failed to land anything before Ward was right back on him, forcing him quickly to the ropes again. They moved back and forth, from the ropes to center ring, Ward snapping in short shots on a Green who wasn’t finding answers. A quick left hook got Ward’s attention with just less than a minute to go and Ward acknowledged the blow by motioning for Green to throw another. Ward tied Green up and walked him to the ropes but Green forced him backwards with his body and fired a shot underneath towards the heart of Ward. A lead left hook in the final ten seconds missed for Green and lazy right was countered with a sharp Ward left.
Rounds five and six looked followed the trends of what had come before, Ward amplifying the punishment to provide contrast. A right hand buckled Green’s legs in the sixth and, as had been the case in round three, Ward pursued Green into the ropes and worked him over with the full range of his offense. Green walked to his corner, the fight half over in terms of time, but with a look that said maybe his time for the night was already up.
Ward cracked Green with a right hand at the opening of round seven, Green posing on the outside and then falling into clinches. Throwing, as he had most of the night, only single token blows, Green struggled for output while Ward remained consistently on his game plan. The action was deliberate, and stayed so until the final minute of the eighth round which featured a pair of strong combinations to the body by Green offset with Ward mugging him along the ropes into the bell. After taking steady abuse again in round nine, a Ward right hand in the final ten seconds saw Green nearly topple as the crowd groaned for him at the echo of the shot.
It was rinse and repeat to begin the tenth, a Ward right busting Green to the ropes and Green following without putting shots together when the action moved off the strands. The entirety of the final minute was another display of Ward as bulldog, whipping Green back and forth with left and right handed leather and sending him to his stool with a bloodied nose and little hope of avoiding six more minutes of beating.
Ward began the championship rounds fighting as if he was the man being shutout, chasing and firing and working for the hope of a stoppage. Green’s hands remained loose in front of him and rarely moved in anger towards the hometown hero. Ward again charged, full force, as the final round got underway, his right hand saying to the crowd that he lusted for a night without scorecards. He wasn’t going to get it.
Green, who had been openly critical of his initial exclusion from the tournament, fought the last three minutes mostly moving backwards, initiating the bulk of the clinches. A final exchange, Green letting his hands go and Ward returning fire, took place where the story of the fight had unfolded, Green with his back to the ropes as Ward controlled the fight. The final bell sounded and Ward waited only moments for his hand to be raised by an academic 120-108 across the board, a bell to bell shutout seen by all three judges.
Ward compared the victory to the Los Angeles Lakers NBA Finals victory earlier in the week. “I feel like Kobe (Bryant) the other night. I don’t know how we got it done. We just worked hard. We prepared for Green. He’s a hard puncher. We couldn’t tell him that before the fight but he’s a hard puncher and he’s very skilled and I’m happy to come away with the victory.”
Ward stated he expected a tougher fight than he got. “I absolutely did. I did expect a little tougher fight but every fight is tough. I don’t care what it looks like. (Green) is to be respected and you got to be mentally alert and that takes a lot of energy out of you. So, we were just well prepared and I take my hat off to him and I hope he does well in (his) next round of the “Super Six.”
Green’s next round means facing WBC titlist Mikkel Kessler (43-2, 32 KO) in a fight where both men’s chances to advance will hang in the balance.
Still focused on his defeat to Ward, Green expressed disappointed and cited training issues in the run up to his facing Ward. “Andre Ward fought a hell of a fight. I don’t want to harp on what he did too much but the three training camps that I’ve done really, really sapped me and I hit a hard wall in training camp. I feel a little worn out. I came down to (166 lbs.), which is a little lower than I expected, so when I came into the ring I felt dead.”
Green, who noted the three training camps as having taken place since December, was referring to training early in the year for an ultimately aborted fight against Contender Season Three winner Sakio Bika and then a broken camp when the Ward fight was postponed from April to June. “I knew coming into this fight I wasn’t feeling my best and Andre Ward showed me a lot of things, a lot of experienced things, things I know about, a lot of things I can deal with, but a lot of things I couldn’t react to because I felt extremely weak.”
While victory may have secured him a slot in the tournament semi-finals, Ward’s road through the preliminary stages is not yet concluded. Round three will feature a showdown with Olympic teammate and 2004 Middleweight Bronze Medalist Andre Dirrell (19-1, 13 KO). Dirrell enters off an upset win over early tournament favorite Arthur Abraham (31-1, 25 KO) in round two following a narrow decision loss to Carl Froch (26-1, 20 KO) in round one, his ticket to the semi’s still not punched.
Dirrell and Ward are good friends outside the ring and Ward stated that it would be hard to fight under those circumstances. “I been putting it off, saying we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. We’re here so we’ll have to deal with it and do what we gotta’ do.”
With Dirrell’s tournament future riding on the outcome, the build should be fantastic into what should be one of boxing’s Fall 2010 highlights.
After Saturday, the Super Six scoreboard stands as with Ward as the leader at 2-0 with four points; Abraham at 1-1 with three; Dirrell, Kessler, and Froch at 1-1 with two points each; and Green at 0-1. Points are awarded at 3 for a win by knockout, two for any other win, and one for a draw.
The fight was broadcast in the U.S. on premium cable outlet Showtime, promoted by Goosen Tutor.
Cliff Rold is a member of the Ring Magazine Ratings Advisory Panel and the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at roldboxing@hotmail.com
