Froch vs. Ward Preview and Prediction
By Andrew Schweitzer
I’ll be honest, two and a half years ago, I wasn’t that excited about Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Series. Don’t ask me why, but I just had a ho-hum attitude about it. Maybe because I was too fixated on people favoring Mikel Kessler and Arthur Abraham to meet in the finals thus thinking that the bouts beforehand would be pointless. That and I felt Jermain Taylor had no business being there in the first place. But I was wrong...well, not about Jermain Taylor.
Over the past two and a half years we’ve learned a lot:
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Andre Ward turned out to be a superstar in the making
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Carl Froch proved that he had more to his arsenal than just a mouth (Plus a smoking hot girlfriend)
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Arthur Abraham showed that he was more one-dimensional than anyone could have imagines when this tournament began
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Mikel Kessler might not be the fighter he used to be but is still capable of a good scrap
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Andre Dirrell showed that he could outbox a feared puncher when most expected him to wilt under the pressure
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Allan Green showed that his future in the sport at a higher weight resembles a question mark
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Glen Johnson showed us that he can still put on good fights and give his opponents trouble (His most recent bout against Lucien Bute notwithstanding)
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And Showtime showed us that just because a tournament is called the “Super Six” that there won’t be more than six fighters
But here we are, less than a week before the final match to determine who the best super-middleweight in the world is and who will go on to face Lucien Bute for a mega fight that will leave us with the first undisputed champion in the division since Joe Calzaghe moved up in 2008. I can’t wait for the fight.
I’ll be honest, at this point I’m having a hard time picking who Fighter of the Year should be but if I had to make a guess, it would probably be the winner of the final fight between WBA titleholder Andre Ward (24-0, 13 KOs) and WBC titleholder Carl Froch (28-1, 20 KOs).
But who is going to win it? Andre Ward was quoted on the tenth episode of the excellent Fight Camp 360 that he expects it to go the same way as Floyd Mayweather vs. Ricky Hatton did almost four years ago and I agree with him. My attitude has shifted in regards to Carl Froch, I like him and think he’s never in a boring fight but I just can’t see him beating Ward.
Ward is a talented young fighter with a great jab and an effective left hook and sticks like glue to the game plans laid out by trainer Virgil Hunter. As he showed against Kessler, he can fight on the outside as well as the inside (as he showed in a dominating performance against Allan Green) and probably has better punching power than most people give him credit for.
I’m hoping that we won’t see any headbutts that were frequent throughout the Kessler fight, but we haven’t seen much of those in Ward’s recent fights so it’ll hopefully be a non-issue.
If there is one thing that I think Ward has that is a great asset to him, it’s his trainer, Virgil Hunter, a man I believe is one of the most underrated trainers in the sport today. He’s able to look at an opponent, dissect their style and then come up with a game plan for his charge to execute.
One thing that also stands out to me is that when The Ring Magazine’s website polled fifteen trainers to predict the outcome for the third bout between Manny Pacquiao and Juan Manuel Marquez, he was the only one who saw Marquez winning by split decision and going by what people are saying, he came closest out of all the others, despite that final verdict in that fight.
The only thing that upsets me about this prediction is that it could be a bit of a stinker. In a lot of articles, Ward is usually describes as a superb tactician. That’s code for: A+ in the skills department, Needs Improvement in the entertainment department.
Ward himself said he never set out to be a superstar in the sport, but one thing that would help him achieve that (should he change his mind) is if he knocked out Carl Froch, something that Hunter is claiming will happen. That’s not going to be an easy thing to do and Carl would love nothing more than for Ward to be coming forward, trying to knock him out only for Froch to land a big shot of his own and win the tournament.
But I don’t see that happening.
However, I don’t expect Carl to take this lying down. He’ll be trying to catch Ward and he’ll do his best to make it an entertaining fight. In the end though, I think he’ll see himself losing a decision.
117-111 Andre Ward
Andrew Schweitzer is a contributing writer to boxing4free.com. When not writing or discussing the sweet science, Andrew can be found at www.SchweitzerMan.blogspot.com where he rants on stuff you may not care about, but will enjoy nonetheless.
Twitter: @SchweitzerMan
