Dan Rafael: Ward's team wants GGG this fall

[Barcham]

Well finally, I was hoping Team Ward to respond GGG's offer.

Lets see if they reach an agreement, I hope so.

War GGG&Ward

There has been no offer, just comments made to 'journalists'. There has been zero communication between K2 and Roc Nation whatsoever. People really need to learn to tell the difference between genuine offers, actual negotiations and simple media comments.

[ShoulderRoll]

GGG fans got their panties in a bunch. Backpedaling and flip flopping and spinning like crazy.

[just the facts]

LOL, ****ing lies. Andrea doesn't have the courage to fight Gennady. He is a coward, all talk and fronting. Bish ass low life trash.

Ggg asks for a catch weight that Ward can't possibly make but Ward is a coward and all talk? Good one idiot.

The problem with this fight is that team ggg doesn't think ggg can win. If they did this fight would have been made already

[Chuckguy]

Fighters get more respect fighing cab drivers these days. You got the casuals who think hes a animal but he hasnt beat anybody. Once he loses he will become a bum/hype job to casuals and alot of people here. Its a great business move to avoid ward and fight cotto /canelo .

Good post bro but GGG is a lot better than you all give him credit. If he loses to Ward it won't do much damage to his career. Ward when active is top 3 p4p. What's wrong with losing o Ward?
Just like losing to Floyd he is the best so no shame in that

[Scipio2009]

So Ward willing to go to 160 to fight Floyd for huge money, but not even 164 for GGG, totally acceptable. But GGG willing to go to 168 to fight Chavez Jr and Froch for huge money, while willing to meet Ward halfway, is evidence of cowardice? Yeah I'd say that is really bloody hilarious.

Ward-Golovkin puts as much money into Golovkin's pocket as Froch-Golovkin or Chavez Jr-Golovkin would've put into Golovkin's pocket (Golovkin wouldn't warrant anything more than the shortend of an 80/20 split for those two fights, while he'd get near 50/50 to fight Ward). For some foolish reason, the GDF seems to want to believe that he'd actually get an equitable split of the money for fights against Froch or Chavez Jr. lol

So yeah, Ward going to 160 for Floyd (90/10 split of a fight that nets $50m still puts $5m into Ward's pocket) is far different from fighting Golovkin at 164 (50/50 split of a fight that $5m puts $2.5m in Ward's pocket, only marginally more than what is now seeming to be what Ward can get at 168 for every other fight).

Golovkin just had his first fight where he got a $1.5m payday, his highest purse to date; Ward-Golovking at 168 doubles that, pretty conservatively.

[Scipio2009]

GGG will be able to take Ward's best punch without any problems, but can Ward take GGG's punches for 12 rounds without any problems? I'm taking GGG in this one because I don't see how Ward can keep GGG away for all 12 rounds without getting caught and stopped. GGG is better than anyone Ward has faced including Froch. I also can't see Ward beating Kovalev.

Golovkin is heavy-handed, but he's not a concussive puncher; if you can name the last fighter that Golovkin actually laid out, I'd like to know.

Darnell Boone, Edison Miranda, and Carl Froch are all concussive punchers; wouldn't also sleep on the power of Arthur Abraham and Allan Green either (have no real interest in digging in and rating the rest of the guy's Ward fought). Ward's been able to handle all of their power pretty well.

perspective is seemingly a tricky thing when they folks talk about Golovkin.

[pacmanis1]

I'm not the biggest Ward supporter, but I hope he doesn't fight GGG til 2016 just because it he were to beat GGG and Kovalev in the same calander year than he would be set for fighter of the year and that's a year I'd be telling my grandkids about. Heck Id even donate to a kickstarter campaign for a movie to be made with Drake playing Ward.

[Scipio2009]

What assumption? Ward just fought at 172 and is talking about maybe going up to 175. A rehydration clause would be an insurance policy to prevent Ward from coming in excessively large in a fight where he intends to wrestle his smaller opponent.


Ward is the B-side in terms of popularity and options. Ward doesn't bring in revenue from the UK or Mexico like Froch or Chavez. He just pulled 300k viewers on free-tv for his last fight. His promoters filled the arena with comp'd seats. Financially he brings nothing to the table, and now he expects Golovkin to give up the size advantage and move up to fight him? K2 can simply wait out Ward's disillusioned ego as he continues to lose Roc Nation millions of dollars per fight.

Golovkin can stay at 160 and continue to make millions with fights against N'Dam, Lee, & Eubank while he awaits big money fights against Alvarez & Lemieux. He can fight internationally as well as he has a global fanbase and is willing to travel.

In comparison Andre Ward has no real options within his own weight class. Most of the fighters are in the PBC, the few others (Groves, Abraham) are international and make more money in their country than what Ward could offer. If Ward really wanted to fight at 175, he would've by now. He rejected a lucrative offer to face WBC champ Adonis Stevenson at 168 & 175. He faces the same economic restrictions to a Kovalev fight that he would a Golovkin fight. Kovalev will soon be a clear A-side to Ward at the negotiations table as he has he has a more appealing style to get fans to watch him and also has options of being willing to fight in Canada as well as Europe & Russia.

... Ward was 173.5lbs three weeks before the Paul Smith fight (you've likely already seen the photo of him standing on the scale, but you're playing dumb to try and make your point).

Beyond that:

-Ward brought more money in at the gate than Golovkin did (Loeffler finally tweeted out that Golovkin-Rubio brought in $500k on the 9k tickets that they were giddy about selling; Ward-Dawson already did over $700k at the gate nearly three years ago)

-300k was the average rating for the entire 2-hr inaugural boxing telecast by BET (Ward-Smith was led into by Nieves-Young and the Nipsey Hussle performance, with the fight ending early opening up some extra time on the tail end of the timeslot as well); the actual Ward-Smith fight likely had a far higher rating, but you probably understood that and acknowledging that would knock your point even more.

-Ward has five WBA rated opponents to pick from (unaffiliated with the PBC) and a promoter willing to put up the money to bring them over/have them step up; what opponents are on that Golovkin short list for the fall? lol

-Kovalev-Mohammedi does maybe $200k at the gate in Vegas, and there's literally nothing for him to look forward to after that.

[jas]

golovkin ducking ward

its obvious

[Eastcoast]

... Ward was 173.5lbs three weeks before the Paul Smith fight (you've likely already seen the photo of him standing on the scale, but you're playing dumb to try and make your point).

So what? He still fought at 172 instead of 168 and even now is saying he's not sure about 168. A rehydration clause would just be an insurance policy, if it doesn't mean anything to Ward then no problem.

Beyond that:

-Ward brought more money in at the gate than Golovkin did (Loeffler finally tweeted out that Golovkin-Rubio brought in $500k on the 9k tickets that they were giddy about selling; Ward-Dawson already did over $700k at the gate nearly three years ago)

LOL, you're comparing how Ward did at his peak popularity in a hyped up super fight to how Golovkin did vs Rubio. As you say - 3 years ago. Ward hasn't come close to that since. Ward/Dawson had over 1,800 tix given out for free to help bring up attendance. Golovkin sold over 9,000 tix, Ward struggled to give that away in his last fight. Against La Bomba he had less the 4,500 in attendance.

-300k was the average rating for the entire 2-hr inaugural boxing telecast by BET (Ward-Smith was led into by Nieves-Young and the Nipsey Hussle performance, with the fight ending early opening up some extra time on the tail end of the timeslot as well); the actual Ward-Smith fight likely had a far higher rating, but you probably understood that and acknowledging that would knock your point even more.

I'm glad you took a stats class and know what a mean is. Even if Ward/Smith peaked a 500-600k (like the tv numbers he did vs Kessler, Abraham, and Froch), that's crap and proof he's not a draw.

-Ward has five WBA rated opponents to pick from (unaffiliated with the PBC) and a promoter willing to put up the money to bring them over/have them step up; what opponents are on that Golovkin short list for the fall? lol

All the guys in bold are available, but other than Rameriz HBO's not paying him his $2mill for any of them. Back to taking another $2mill loss for RN. Golovkin can fight N'Dam in October, sell 10,000 seats in MSG, average over 1.3mill tv rating (more than double what Ward will get on BET at the peak), make another $1.5mill from HBO, and make another million plus from selling his fight internationally (as he's been doing for years now).

TITLE BOXER ORGANIZATION COUNTRY
1 OFFICIAL CHALLENGER VACANT
2 CARL FROCH GBR
3 GILBERTO RAMIREZ MEX
4 FELIX STURM GER
5 GEORGE GROVES GBR
6 PATRICK NIELSEN INT DEN
7 VINCENT FEIGENBUTZ GER
8 MAURICIO REYNOSO PER
9 JULIUS JACKSON USA
10 JULIO CESAR CHAVEZ JR MEX
11 ROGELIO MEDINA MEX
12 HADILLAH MOHOUMADI FRA
13 FRANK BUGLIONI GBR
14 ROCKY FIELDING GBR
15 ISAAC EKPO NIG

-Kovalev-Mohammedi does maybe $200k at the gate in Vegas, and there's literally nothing for him to look forward to after that.

Mandalay Bay will probably be close to half-empty, but it's his first time headlining there and he's doing so against an unknown fighter - to be expected. He'll still do more than double the ratings Ward will on BET, he'll still sell more tix than Ward has since Dawson, and people will still care to watch his fights.

Kovalev has options. He might do a rematch in Montreal vs Pascal, maybe Germany vs Brahmer, maybe Russia vs Lepikhin or Chilemba. The fact that he has confidence in himself - he's willing to travel and that gives him options. The fact that he's able to KO his opponents will always give him an audience and networks like HBO will always be happy to buy his fights.


Bottom line - Golovkin & Kovalev don't need Andre Ward. They're exciting fighters who can get decent numbers vs low name fighters. Andre Ward is a boring *ss fighter who just got booted off his own network in HBO and is losing his promoter millions of dollars because he's trying to project himself as a false image of something he's not - an attraction.