(Photo: Tom Casino, Showtime)
It going to take a monster to beat Andre Ward, the most complete boxer in the game right now. A better version of Arthur Abraham than we’ve seen in recent fights showed up Saturday night on Showtime and gave it a shot, but it wasn’t even close by fight’s end — Abraham won just two rounds on two scorecards, and none on the third. And the scary thing is, Ward is such a perfectionist he’s never satisfied even when he wins in such a dominant fashion, so the window of opportunity to beat him is only going to get smaller.
With the win, Ward advances to the championship bout of the innovative Super Six tournament, where he’ll face the winner of the super middleweight clash between Carl Froch and Glen Johnson. I’d give either man a better chance of beating Ward than Abraham, but Ward probably won’t be truly challenged until middleweight champion Sergio Martinez moves up a division, or until Ward squares off with Lucian Bute. His versatility, intelligence and willpower are quickly making him one of my favorite fighters, and I don’t know if we’ll discover his limits until the Super Six is over.
Abraham ditched his tendency to start slow — which is probably an understatement; he usually barely throws a punch for the first three rounds — and came at Ward, and was effective. He was landing hard right hands behind his jab from distance, then digging into Ward’s body on the inside. I still gave Ward three of the first four rounds, but it was unusual to see the defensively astute Ward getting hit with such powerful, flush punches. Bad news for the division: Ward stood up to the punches really well, so the notion that he has a bad chin is rapidly becoming a myth, because Abraham really is a heavy hitter.
But Ward had already been working over Abraham’s body, too, and that, plus the greater activity from Abraham and all the effort he was expending to get after the nimble Ward, had the Armenian by way of Germany tired by the 5th round. In the 7th, Abraham only managed to throw nine punches. As the fight wore on, he got more wild with his attack. He rallied in the final round with some sharp left hooks, but it wasn’t enough.
Ward did look mildly concerned early, unusual for such a poised fighter, perhaps because he had been stung by Abraham’s punches. But he became yet more elusive, boxing more rather than brawling, and found a few things that worked, like an uppercut that penetrated Abraham’s high guard. It’s true as he said in a post-fight interview that he wasn’t able to use the Froch or Andre Dirrell blueprint that they used to beat Abraham, because he’s not as tall and long as either of those men. But he was too good a boxer for Abraham, period.
Judging from the reaction on Twitter, Ward made a better impression on fans than he has in some recent fights. He didn’t head butt Abraham to any meaningful degree, one of the knocks on Ward’s fan appeal. He did hold a lot on the inside, but showed he was willing to work out of the clinches after Abraham held his head down and punched him in the ribs, except for the referee decided not to allow either man to do anything in those clinches. He beat up Abraham pretty good, as his swollen face suggested, but he still lacks world-class power. That will limit his popularity, surely.
However, from a purely boxing standpoint, Ward was as good as he could be, and he did it against an Abraham who may have helped his reputation slightly with this performance, even though it’s still hard to imagine him beating anyone of any real quality at super middleweight. Don’t tell Ward he was as good as he could be, though. He won’t believe you. And that’s the kind of thing that’s going to help an already-terrific fighter challenge for the pound-for-pound crown one of these days.
