By Thomas Gerbasi
“Respect the game, and the game will respect you.”
Those words, spoken to WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward by a veteran fighter whose days had long passed him by, were the kind that stick to your brain and never leave. And when they come from someone who has walked in the shoes you’re currently wearing, they carry even more weight.
So Ward has respected the game of boxing. He trains hard, he takes no one lightly, and when he steps between the ropes, he’s well aware that it may be the last time he does so. The last part is a formality, something you know in your head and in your heart, but that you don’t really address. I’ll leave when I say it’s time to leave, you tell yourself. Being forced out of the game? That won’t happen to me.
Until it does, or until it hits close to home and you’re forced to revisit your mortality. This Saturday night, Ward will approach the four steps he has walked up 22 times as a professional, and make his 23rd trip into the ring to defend his title against Sakio Bika. He should have been fighting his teammate on the 2004 United States Olympic team, Andre Dirrell, in the latest installment of the Super Six 168-pound tournament, but in early October, Dirrell withdrew from the tournament, citing neurological issues stemming from his disqualification win over Arthur Abraham in March.
Ward and Dirrell are more than former teammates and current competitors. They call each other ‘friend’, and when a 27-year old young man with a bright future in and out of the ring is forced to address a medical issue that could possibly end his career and affect his quality of life, it will make you think. Andre Ward has thought about it.
“You think about it from time to time, especially when you see something unfortunate like the Dirrell situation and even what happened to Paul Williams the other night,” said Ward, referring to Williams’ one punch knockout loss to Sergio Martinez last Saturday. “That’s the reality of our sport and that’s why I try and my team tries to take this sport very seriously. I just try to always respect the sport of boxing in terms of my preparation and when I’m in a fight. I try to go in there and understand that I can be knocked out, I can lose, but obviously I’m doing everything in my power to stop that from happening. I think that’s a healthy mentality because when you go in there feeling like it can’t happen, you’re not prepared when you do get hit with a good shot or if you’re in that situation. Obviously Dirrell’s situation was a freak accident and that’s just a very simple lesson to protect yourself at all times – period. But like the Paul Williams situation, that kind of thing just happens. I’m thankful that I’m developing a style where yes, I can engage and I’m very physical, but at the same time, I work hard to dominate a situation and not let it be a 50-50 fight. I want to try to have the advantages at all time.”
At 22-0, and fresh off back-to-back wins over Mikkel Kessler and Allan Green, Ward is pretty much always in the driver’s seat when it comes to what happens in the ring. And while he first gained acclaim – and an Olympic Gold medal – for his speed, savvy, and ability to break down a fight like a grandmaster breaks down a chess board, he showed in his recent bouts the ability to reach down and handle himself in a dogfight, to not only be the matador, but the bull. This weekend, in Australian strongman Bika, he faces a fighter who can change the course of a fight with a single blow, or with a concussive series of them. He shouldn’t win at the Oracle Arena in Ward’s hometown of Oakland this weekend, but he can, and that makes him a very dangerous man, especially to a young champion who has a fighter’s heart beating inside a boxer’s body.
“Sometimes that’s my mentality initially, but we always seem to get it together quickly in a situation like that,” said Ward when asked how he’ll put his instincts aside in favor of his gameplan should Bika crack him. “Your first instinct is to respond if you get hit with a good shot, and it’s ego and pride, but in a situation like this, with what’s at stake, you can’t get caught up like that. That won’t be a problem Saturday night. I’m gonna get my respect, but at the same time, I’m gonna fight when I want to fight, and fight when Bika doesn’t want to fight, and basically take control of the situation.”
Control, it’s what Ward always wants in the ring, and he has done the work necessary to get it. He admits that baseball was his first athletic love, but at the same time, he says, “I was rough in terms of liking to get my hands dirty in whatever sport I played.” So when his father Frank began telling of his days as a 15-0 amateur boxer, Ward was hooked.
“He just started telling me stories, and I’m a dreamy kind of kid, so I’m listening to him tell me about his rivals and how he prepared and it was a big deal to me, and I wanted to be like him.”
Ward’s amateur career was a stellar one, interrupted only briefly by some adolescent rebellion.
“I started at nine, and I had a very loving childhood but a very strict childhood in terms of the regimen,” he said. “Every day was pretty much me and my brother got up, we’d get ready for school, go to school, come home, do homework, and it’s off to the gym. That’s not really normal for a 10, 11, 12 year old kid. So I did that for a long time, and by the time I got to high school I was getting to the point where I was kinda burned out from boxing, and honestly I really wanted nothing to do with the sport. I just wanted time to be a kid. So I played football. I did well, I ran track, and I started to get a few looks in my junior year, and at that point I started to get the itch back and thank goodness I was able to get back at it as the Olympics and everything were taking place.”
Brother Naazim Richardson, renowned trainer of Bernard Hopkins and Shane Mosley, as well as a key figure in the development of some of the US’ top amateurs over the years, told me a while back about a young Ward chasing him down the hall to find out more about a particular technique while the rest of his teammates at the time ran the other way to go hang out, and this is typical Ward, as old a soul you will find in the guise of a 26-year old.
Again, it’s about respecting the game, and Ward has done that, earning a professional world title in the process, despite whispers from fans and pundits that he was being moved too slowly by his promoter Dan Goossen. Yet when the spotlight was shining its brightest, on November 21, 2009, he delivered his best performance to date with an 11 round technical decision win over Kessler. That was a little over a year ago. He assesses his first 12 months as champion.
“I think it’s been really good,” said Ward. “I think it’s been strong and I want to end this year with a bang on Saturday night. I feel like we’re right where we need to be and right where I want to be, and that being said, there’s still a lot of work to be done. I have a world title and I’m fighting one tough guy after the next, trying to cement my legacy and cement my name in the sport, because I want to be the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world in my era, and that’s my goal. So everything is going according to schedule.”
Schedules. Control. Dominating a situation. Ward’s greatest strength may be his ability to take the reins and make his own luck in the ring. That comes with hard work, years of study, and a mental toughness that is essential to one day cross the road from good to great. He knows it, but what about those who can’t control what happens between those ropes, like his wife Tiffiney, sons Andre Jr. and Malachi, and daughter Amira? These are loved ones who, through the Dirrell situation, have now seen the other side of this sport closer than they ever have before.
“We may talk about it briefly, but I have a strong belief that God has given me a tremendous talent and I believe he’s opened up these doors and allowed me to do what I’m doing,” responds Ward. “Faith without works is dead. I just can’t sit at home and eat Twinkies and expect God to do everything – it doesn’t work like that. I’ve got to do my part, and I’m doing that. When I’m away from my family for two months at a time and sacrificing and putting in the work, it’s my works with my faith being combined, and that being said, I don’t believe anything like that will happen to me, and that’s just my stance on it. And from there you just gotta go and do what you do. You can’t harp on it. It’s no different than a football player seeing a guy get hit and knocked unconscious. He’s still got to bring it the next play; it’s just part of what we do. We develop a strong defense mechanism against it, and you just go and put in your work.”
It’s what a fighter does. The second you start thinking about being mortal, you become mortal. On Saturday night, Andre Ward can’t afford that. He’s got to be Superman, and Superman doesn’t ever get hurt. And that’s precisely the idea – to be the one delivering the hurt, not receiving it.