By Cliff Rold

Two years ago, the New England Patriots won 18 games in a row.

They lost the nineteenth.

In 2001, the Seattle Mariners won a Major League Baseball record 116 wins. 

They lost the American League Championship Series four games to one, never making it to the World Series.

This Saturday night, 30-year old WBA Super Middleweight titlist Mikkel Kessler (42-1, 32 KO) will enter the ring in defense of both his belt and his position in the “Super Six” tournament at 168 lbs.

He is positioned as the favorite on both fronts.

While a fellow tournament participant, German-based Armenian Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KO), holds even with Kessler among some odds makers, since the announcement of this event it has been Kessler who stood as the de facto number one seed.

Being a favorite doesn’t matter once the bell rings.  It certainly won’t matter to 25-year old 2004 U.S. Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medalist Andre Ward (20-0, 13 KO).  Why should it? 

Ward may be entering the biggest professional spotlight of his career, but it’s not his first time under heavy pressure.  In 2004, he packed on extra pounds and moved up a weight division to strengthen the U.S. Olympic team.  Fighting at the amateur Light Heavyweight line of 178 lbs., he styled his way to the top of the podium.

Ward was on the road, Athens to be specific, for that challenge.  He’ll have the home court for Kessler, bringing the Dane to the Oracle Arena in his hometown of Oakland, California.

It’s the best match-up of the first round.

It could be the most important match of Kessler’s career.

One could look back a couple years and find room to argue with the sentiment.  On November 3, 2007, Kessler and Joe Calzaghe locked horns in front of over 50,000 fans at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales.  Calzaghe entered with the WBO belt at 168 lbs., Kessler the unified WBA/WBC titlist.  It was a heck of a fight, fast paced and with some early momentum swings both ways.  The younger man, the bigger puncher, Kessler had a chance to break through to the global elite.

He justifiably lost eight rounds on two judge’s scorecards at the end of the night, nine on the other.  While he might have been hampered by a bad hand injury going into the fight, it wasn’t pain which defeated him.  Kessler showed up to do what he does best.  He jabbed.  He threw combinations…and he got lost when Calzaghe started to make adjustments.  Worse, there were moments in the bout when the broadcast of the fight picked up a fighter in the corner who seemed almost over awed by the situation.

It was a big moment, on hostile turf, and it may have gotten to him.

Prior to Calzaghe, Kessler accomplished much at Super Middleweight.  The men he beat for his belts, Anthony Mundine and Markus Beyer, were longtime stalwarts in the class, allowing to become one of only a few men to unify belts in the class.  In his penultimate bout before Cardiff, Kessler drubbed the game Librado Andrade. 

Those wins, and the fact that he competed tough against a future Hall of Famer in his lone loss, are what make him the favorite going into Ward and the Super Six.  They are a why Kessler is rated number one in the division by ESPN, Ring Magazine, and BoxingScene.

But ratings don’t mean anything in the ring and it’s a tenuous hold on the top.  Since the Calzaghe loss, Kessler has fought only three times while battling through management issues.  None of the three opponents were worth much notice.  A proposed Spring 2008 fight with Edison Miranda fell apart and made Kessler look bad, his fault or not, in the process.  When Calzaghe moved up the scale, and then moved into retirement, Kessler assumed the lead spot mostly because no one else could make an argument for it yet. 

Only Canada’s Lucian Bute (24-0, 19 KO) has really gotten close to him near the top thus far.  He won’t have to worry about Bute, who isn’t in the tournament, anytime soon.

American fans, viewers, and pundits remain often skeptical of European talents.  Despite all of their successes over the last decade, despite their dominance of most of the top ten’s from Middleweight through Heavyweight, there is a sort of waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

Kessler, to those who saw him against Andrade and Calzaghe (and U.S. TV ratings stateside weren’t earth shattering by any means, despite heavily attended fights overseas), was clearly a good fighter.  Questions remain as to whether he can be more than that.

For a fighter who flirted briefly with pound-for-pound type recognition going into Calzaghe, the Super Six is a life line.  He won’t fall out of play if he doesn’t win against Ward.  It’s nothing dramatic like that.  Everyone is guaranteed three preliminary bouts and Kessler, slated currently to move on to WBC titlist Carl Froch (26-0, 20 KO) and former Middleweight king Jermain Taylor (28-4-1, 17 KO) in rounds two and three, will likely enter those bouts even more favored to win than he is this weekend.

Ward matters more than those bouts will.

Of all the Americans, which include Taylor and fellow 2004 Olympian Andre Dirrell (18-1, 13 KO), Ward looked like the best chance to win “Super Six” going in.  He also remained a question mark in terms of professional power, chin, and style.  In other words, Ward was ultimate upside “if” guy.  If he can defeat Kessler, Ward assumes his role as a favorite and, more, assumes a position as a potential superstar. 

Kessler would have to reach, and wait until, the elimination rounds next year for a chance to truly rebuild his reputation again.

Conversely, with a win this weekend, he’ll have the look of a man whose path is cleared to the finals.  It may not be; in a format like this, anything can happen.

But in boxing, appearances often count as much as much as results.  There will be those who wonder, before this weekend, if Kessler is really a ‘winner.’  It doesn’t matter that the answer has been yes 42 times; the time he wasn’t was the one that counted.

This weekend counts too. 

Mikkel Kessler is the favorite and he’ll have to fight like it. 

Just being the favorite never won anyone anything.

The Weekly Ledger

But wait, there’s more…

Cliff’s Notes…

As the build to Pacquiao-Mayweather begins in earnest, does anyone else yearn for a simpler time where who would win the fight was not debated in equal measure with who should be paid more?  Seriously, fights fans, not one of those dollars is going in your pockets and, in fact, you’ll spend at least $55 to find out who the better man is…That said, the buy rate for Pacquiao-Cotto is definitely an intriguing number…Hatton-Marquez?  Nice cash out, but Marquez-Juan Diaz II is better…One week until Koki Kameda-Daisuke Naito.  It’s the biggest Flyweight fight in years, even if only a pocket of the world realizes.

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