Carlos Balderas Jr. and Nico Hernandez are the lone two Americans due to appear in Olympic boxing action this weekend. Both boxers will fight on Saturday, the first day of boxing for the 2016 Rio Olympics. Each carry the hope of not just advancing to the next round of competition, but far enough along to contribute to a team intent of restoring the image of a U.S. male boxing program that hasn't brought home Olympic hardware since 2008.

It's been four years longer since the U.S. team captured a Gold medal, that moment coming when Andre Ward (29-0, 15KOs) conquered the light heavyweight field during the 2004 Athens Games - in fact the only American male boxer to bring home Olympic Gold in the past 20 years. The feat remains part of an incredible and uninterrupted win streak that dates back to his early teenage years in the amateur ranks – and also remains high among his fondest boxing memories.

“I think about it all the time,” Ward gleefully admitted during a recent conference call to otherwise discuss his upcoming showdown with Alexander Brand. That particular bout takes place this weekend at Oracle Arena in Ward’s hometown of Oakland, Calif.

The venue – which is also the home to the NBA’s Golden State Warriors – will have played host to each of Ward’s past three bouts, and his eighth overall dating back to 2009. His first time there came in a May ’09 decision win over Edison Miranda, six months before his career-breakthrough victory over Mikkel Kessler for his first title win. It also kicked off the famed Showtime Super Six super middleweight tournament, which ended with Ward conquering Carl Froch to become the true (lineal) World super middleweight champion.

To this day, Ward likens the experience to what he had to endure in becoming an Olympic Gold medalist – proving the critics wrong, all while doing your best to focus less on the naysayers and more on the task at hand in the ring.

“I draw on that time and those experiences, those emotions, those feelings that I had, the things I had to overcome,” Ward fondly recalls. “It’s different but it’s all the same; as a professional, it’s a different format in terms of the fights and the caliber of the opposition, but it’s still the same test, same doubters, same things you’re trying to accomplish and overcome so 100%, I draw on those things and it’s good and bad, maybe bad isn’t the right word, but it definitely can give you a boost coming into the pros for a lot of reasons like financially, confidence-wise.

The incredible run he’s enjoyed since age 13 includes Olympic Gold, a World championship reign at super middleweight record and spotless record since turning pro in Dec. ’04. Dating back to the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta – when David Reid rallied from behind to become the only American to claim a Gold medal – Ward is rivaled only by Floyd Mayweather Jr. in terms of U.S. Olympians who have remained unbeaten and dominant at the sport’s highest level.

That’s not at all to say that his career has been perfect.

In fact, this weekend’s showcase appearance is the final step towards a planned November 19 showdown with unbeaten, unified light heavyweight titlist Sergey Kovalev. The winner will make a hell of a case for himself as pound-for-pound the very best boxer in the world. It’s a distinction Ward has previously enjoyed, or at least has been in the conversation right alongside Mayweather for the better part of the past five years.

That he has been tasked with having to move up in weight and eventually beat Kovalev to reclaim that honor – and in the wake of Mayweather retiring last September (for now, anyway) – is due in large part to injuries and promotional disputes that have plagued an otherwise perfect career. The rest has simply been Ward spending his boxing lifetime literally fighting for respect.

It’s never been enough that he claimed the sport’s highest honors both as an amateur and a pro. The more he’s achieved, the higher the bar continues to raise.

“[Y]ou also have to deal with the extra added pressure of having a bullseye on your back. Being a Gold Medalist which is and of itself extremely, extremely hard to deal with because no matter who you fight, no matter where you go, you are the Olympic Gold Medalist, and if a guy even remotely looks good against you, has a good round against you, everybody is looking at it like what happened to the Gold Medalist?” Ward points out. “So, that’s a lot of pressure to deal with but I’ve been fortunate to learn how to deal with that and to compete under that type of pressure so that now it’s just second nature.”

He bears that in mind heading into Saturday’s bout with Brand (25-1, 19KOs), himself a former amateur standout but who is regarded as a massive underdog versus Ward. The once-beaten light heavyweight from Colombia came up short in two separate bids to qualify for the Olympics – in 2004 and 2008 – and his lone loss as a pro coincides with the one time he’s stepped up in class, dropping a split decision to then-unbeaten prospect Badou Jack, who has since lost, rebounded and now serves as a super middleweight titlist.

It remains to be seen what Brand can accomplish in the pro ranks. For now, he serves as cannon fodder for Ward, who is more than a 100-1 favorite to prevail in their HBO-televised affair and boldly march into this fall’s highly anticipated title fight versus Kovalev.

Given that, Ward is well aware that no matter his performance, most fans – critics high among them – won’t change their opinion of where he rates today, and how November 19 ultimately plays out. The mentally strong gym rat in him has never particularly cared about focusing too much time and energy on trying to change that dynamic.

 “I’m not really too interested in trying to change any minds, leading up to this fight, (or) about Kovalev,” Ward admits. “It’s not about public opinion. It’s not about any of those things, you know? At the end of the day, it’s about the opinions after the fight and you walking away with those belts and winning that fight, that’s the ultimate opinion changer.

“If I’m honest, some of the people who are talking down on Kovalev right now (following a decision win over Isaac Chilemba in an uneven performance last month at home in Russia) and are saying that he’s tailor-made for Ward are the same people who were saying that Kovalev was going to kill me, asking why am I taking this fight and those kind of things. So opinions come with the wind, it just depends on the day, it depends on the weather, and that’s kind of, unfortunately, how we are as people a lot of the time.”

The expectation is that Ward handles Brand with as much ease as should be the case for a world-class athlete who has not just achieved greatness, but global dominance on the sport’s highest stage as an amateur and as a pro. Regardless of how it plays out, it’s a next step he needed in order to move towards a fight that – with a winning performance – should chip away at even the most stubborn critics who refuse to offer full credit.

Lesser men would’ve found a way to let it get the best of them, whether falling short in a fight they should have won, or just throwing their hands in the air and walking away for good.

Ward’s mental makeup has disallowed either to happen, though not to say it hasn’t been an internal struggle.

“I don’t know if giving up is the right word. I was very close to walking away,” Ward reveals of where his mindset was a couple of years ago during an ongoing legal battle with the late Dan Goossen, his former promoter. “I wanted to walk away simply because I would rather walk away if there was not going to be any resolution to my situation with my head held high and on my own terms as opposed to just slowly letting my career dwindle away without any resolution. I didn’t really look at it as a giving up type of thing because even when the lawsuits and different things were going on, I already had 19 years under my belt and that’s a lot of time for a professional boxer so I felt like I had done a lot of what I wanted to do.

“But yeah, I was very close to it, I talked about it a lot, was very close to retiring. I thank God that I have great counselors, friends and people whose opinions I trust and every time I got ready to really do it, they would tell me to hold on, that it’s not the right time, and that these tough times are going to pass. They were right.”

Young athletes like Balderas Jr. and Hernandez can only hope the tough times have also passed for the U.S. men’s amateur boxing program. Their first piece of Olympic action will be in the books by the time Ward steps into the ring Saturday evening.

While Ward continues to soldier on in search of finding new ways to add to an already incredible boxing legacy, he remains the measuring stick to which all American boxers – amateur and pro - will be compared. That honor is worth more than the lone Gold medal among any U.S. male boxer in the past 20 years.

Twitter: @JakeNDaBox_v2