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Andre Ward retirement decision questioned

By Daily Sports on January 3, 2018

Carl Froch believes that Andre Ward’s decision to hang up his gloves recently was influenced by the emergence of young Russian knockout specialist, Dmitry Bivol (12-0, 10 KOs).

Ward, 33, recently pulled a real shocking moving in vacating his IBF, WBA and WBO light heavyweight titles and retiring from boxing. At the time Ward retired, the World Boxing Association was on the verge of ordering him to defend against interim WBA 175 lb. champion Bivol, who had been the interim champion since February of 2017.

Bivol would be a very tough fight for Ward to take right now. With Bivol’s tremendous power in either hand, Ward would need to absorb a lot of heavy shots to try and beat him by a decision or a knockout. It’s likely that Ward would smother Bivol on the inside the way he did Sergey Kovalev in their 2 fights, but it’s questionable whether that tactic would work.

Had Ward not vacated his WBA title, he would have had to face Bivol. Likewise, Ward would have had to face Artur Beterbiev (12-0, 12 KOs) to defend his IBF light heavyweight belt against the 2-time Russian Olympian.

Beterbiev was scheduled to face Enrico Koelling for the IBF 175-pound mandatory spot, which he won by a 12th round knockout. But with Ward vacating his IBF title, Beterbiev became the IBF light heavyweight champion instead of Ward’s mandatory for that belt.

”I have a feeling Bivol helped Andre Ward make his retirement decision and I don’t say it very often, but I’ve seen something in Bivol that I wouldn’t want to stand in front of,” said Froch to skysports.com. ”Dmitry Bivol announced himself to the World with a brutal first round one punch knockout win against Trent Broadhurst.”

Some boxing fans might think Froch is giving Ward grief about him retiring rather than taking the fight with Bivol due to personal reasons.

Froch lost to Ward by a 12 round unanimous decision in the finals of Showtime’s Super Six tournament in December 17, 2011. Ward did a lot of smothering on the inside to keep Froch from getting his shots off. Froch didn’t like the way that Ward spoiled for much of the fight, and he let the boxing fans know about it afterward. To this day, Froch calls Ward a “boring” fighter due to his style of fighting, which sometimes involves a lot of grappling on the inside.

”I think Dmitry Bivol is going to be great,” said Froch. ”He has a cool and calm demeanor and he oozes confidence, but not arrogant or nonchalant, he is just relaxed. He is so precise, so accurate with his work, he’s lethal. Put him in with Sergey Kovalev down the line and you will see how good he is,” said Froch.

•Photo shows Andre Ward.

Source Daily Sports

Posted January 3, 2018