By Thomas Gerbasi
Twelve years ago, when 20-year-old Andre Ward brought home an Olympic Gold medal for the United States, he was seemingly destined for greatness in the pro ring.
Some believe the mission was accomplished. Others call it unfinished business.
Saturday night’s fight against 39-year-old Alexander Brand won’t answer any of those questions, and maybe they shouldn’t even be asked at this point.
Ward followed up his gold-winning performance with 29 wins and no losses. He won a super middleweight title in 2009 and each of his fights over the next four years had a belt or two on the line. More importantly, the list of fighters he vanquished at 168 pounds included Mikkel Kessler, Allan Green, Sakio Bika, Arthur Abraham, Chad Dawson and Carl Froch.
It should have been enough that if Ward walked away after his 2013 win over Edwin Rodriguez and decided that the promotional issues that were about to keep him out of the sport for nearly two years were too much, in 2018 he would get a call from the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota.
He was that good. He practically cleared out his division. He beat the best of the best in his weight class and he did so definitively. Ward also thought that his legacy was going to live or die on those accomplishments. And he was fine with that.
“I was very close to walking away and 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,” he said during a recent media teleconference. “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.”
Ward didn’t retire. He resolved his out of the ring issues, and while he returned to the ring with wins over Paul Smith and Sullivan Barrera, few remembered – or chose to remember – his previous run. Criticized for his choice of opposition, as well as for remaining out of the ring for so long, Ward saw any goodwill he built up with the hardcore fanbase of the sport disappear.
That’s boxing.
If someone hasn’t been beaten down, defeated, or forced to rebound from adversity in the ring, it’s as if past accomplishments don’t matter. If he makes a stand for something he believes in, he’s turned into a businessman and is no longer a fighter.
In most cases, we dismiss this part of the fight game. It happens so often that we become immune to it. Ward, one of the good guys of the game and a classy ambassador for a sport that needs all the classy ambassadors it can get, should have built up enough goodwill to last him.
He didn’t get that benefit of the doubt, and he probably doesn’t care. He’s a fighter who doesn’t fight for the roar of the crowd, the desires of those who alternatively praise or denigrate him on social media, or for the mythical pound-for-pound title. Yet what he does fight for is still a mystery.
“I’m just not the guy who is going to crown myself the best, that’s just not how I roll,” Ward said. “I know what type of ability I have. I know what I’ve accomplished. That is clear. And I know what I want to accomplish at the end of the day.”
The 32-year-old Ward won’t thrash Alexander Brand this weekend, drop the mic and go into broadcasting full-time. It’s not how he’s wired, especially when a challenge stands ahead of him that some feel will be the one that puts the first mark in his loss column. But he doesn’t talk Sergey Kovalev. The way he sees it, it’s not time yet.
“He’s not my next opponent,” Ward said when asked if he watched Kovalev’s win over Isaac Chilemba last month. “It is obviously the end game and what we’re trying to get but I didn’t watch it. I have to compartmentalize what I have to do right now. That’s just kind of how I operate and how I stay focused. I don’t want to juggle two opponents right now. I have to focus on one guy and that’s Alexander Brand on August 6. I will not take him lightly. If I’m not successful August 6, there is no fight down the road with me and Kovalev and I’m very clear about that it’s not just a fight for me.”
What a Kovalev fight is for Andre Ward is a redemption song he doesn’t really need. He’s fought a career worth bragging about in the eyes of everyone but the hardcores who feel that the “Krusher” is his Kryptonite. And he’s okay with that. Not the Kryptonite part, but with the silencing critics part. That’s enough reason to fight, not that he’s going to admit it. But wherever you find motivation, you take it.
“When you are in your late teens, early 20s, you just go,” he said. “When you get into your late 20s and 30s and you’ve accomplished some things, you become very aware that you are punching your clock to go to work and it’s time to go to work. I’m very aware of that but I’m thankful. I’m thankful that I do have the drive, and I self-check myself and I’m self-aware. I pay attention to my intensity and my dedication, making sure that I’m doing the little things. Not overlooking those things, whether it’s in your diet or your rest or your body work or whatever the case may be, and that those things are on point. Any type of extra fuel that you can get, you use that as well. You’ve got to find a reason to fight at a certain point in your career when you’ve put in time. So, all in all, I feel good and I’m happy about that because if I felt like I had multiple days and weeks or several months where I just couldn’t get myself going, I wouldn’t step in the ring. I would find another vocation or something else to do because this isn’t the sport for that.”
