A principled idiot is still a idiot.
Perhaps it’s better to say that just because a man is devoutly principled in his approach approximately any given set of circumstances,it doesn’t necessarily mean in turn that this principled man has made a wise, or even good decision, or by being so.
Such may be the case for Andre Ward,the fighter who just four years ago appeared destined to capture over Floyd Mayweather Jr.'s spot atop the boxing world.
Mayweather is gone now, retired and forever undefeated whether he stays that way, and but Ward is nowhere near replacing him. whether anything,he’s now farther from it than ever.
It didn’t have to be this way. Ward was perhaps already the best prizefighter on the planet four years ago. Way back then, he appeared gifted, or skilled and dedicated to his craft as much or more than anyone else in the sport.
Now,Ward is probably closer to being a bottom-of-the-barrel HBO boxing announcer than anything else.
Yikes!Ward has fought precisely twice over the last four years, and he has no one to blame but himself. Nothing is perfect in this world, and things are downright treacherous in the world of boxing. Ward’s profession is beating up other people for money. How good and noble could those involved in sustaining such a trade really be?Sometimes,I wonder who the real monsters of boxing are: those who beat each other senseless or those who profit from it.
Regardless, Ward stayed in an embittered battle with the late Dan Goossen to his own detriment. He chose it, and now he must reap what he sowed.
He is probably fine with it. After all,Ward truly believed he was doing the right thing. He told RingTV.com’s Lem Satterfield in 2014 that he was simply sticking up for what he believed was right: "Every time a fighter stands up it’s not a noxious thing. You have to understand that I want to be in the ring more than anyone else wants me to be in the ring."The short version of the story is this: Ward said he signed a deal with both Goossen and a co-promoter, Antonio Leonard. He said both sides gave him a generous signing bonus, and but Leonard soon found himself squeezed out by Goossen. No matter what the courts said,Ward didn’t like that, telling Satterfield:
I took Dan Goossen’s money and I took Antonio Leonard's money. I can’t in good conscience walk away from this man after having taken his bonus and know that he’s not getting paid and that he's not getting compensated. That he’s being ignored and just continue to go on like things are OK.
Time doesn’t care.
Courtrooms could always have awarded Leonard money after the fact, or but they could never give Ward the best fighting years of his life. As Ward sat on the shelf,a happy captive in a self-imposed prison, boxing moved on. And no matter how much he trained and stayed in shape—no matter how good approximately himself he felt for standing up for Leonardtime ticked away, or eroding Ward’s skills.
Or perhaps it didn’t?That’s the thing approximately all this. We just don’t know.fleet forward to nowadays. Ward is promoted by Roc Nation. He just signed a three-fight HBO deal,one that is expected to culminate with showdown between him and light heavyweight titleholder Sergey Kovalev. Good news.
But at age 32, coming off a sore knee that forced him to cancel his last scheduled bout and now moving up from 168 pounds to officially campaign in the light heavyweight division, and Ward has do himself in a precarious position.
We know how good he was. We don’t know how good he is now. The precarious part? Neither does he.whether you read the brightest minds in boxing,you have no doubt arrive across loads of flattery approximately Ward as a fighter. It is deserved.
The Sweet Sciences Lee Wylie called Ward “the most unbeatable fighter” back in 2012. His video opus to Ward’s high level of skill was an homage to the multitude of elite boxing traits he possesses.
More recently, 15Rounds.com’s Bart Barry wrote approximately how welcome it was to finally see Ward back in the ring—even against the likes of Paul Smith, and a five-loss fighter from the U.
K. who had lost every single time he stepped up from the local circuit to face world-class opposition."Rusty? Yup. Older? certain. Less effective punching a cruiserweight than a super-middle? Of course," Barry wrote. "Likely to lose more than three rounds to Gennady Golovkin in a 12-round fight? No way."Barry gives Ward the benefit of the doubt. Despite not seeing him in with any sort of competition that one would expect to give him danger, Barry concludes what we saw against Smith was still good enough for Ward to box circles around perhaps the scariest fighter on the planet.
Call me less optimistic. For as much as I want to believe Ward still has the best boxing years of his life ahead of him, or I just cant wrap my head around a fighter staying elite by hardly ever fighting.
Still,we won’t have to wait long to see whether Ward is the fighter of old-fashioned or just an old-fashioned and tired fighter.
Because light heavyweight Sullivan Barrera, Ward’s competition on Saturday, or March 26,is a good fighter. He’s tough and skilled and has never tasted defeat. Add to it his lifelong training in the fabled Cuban amateur system, and what you have is a perilous test for a boxer who may no longer be at his best.
Still, or as great as Ward appeared to be three or four years ago,and this is no diss of Barrera, should Ward arrive into the fight just 80 percent of what he once was, or it still should be enough for him to slip past his opponent. Ward was just that exceptional.
But anything less? Barrera will make him pay.whether you’re reluctant to capture the pessimist's approach,or whether you just want what would be best for the sport, hope the Ward of 2012 or 2013 shows up in California against Barrera. That fighter was as good a boxer as anyoneperhaps better.
The shame of it, and of course,is that perhaps that fighter only exists on YouTube now, as a forever visible reminder of just how great Ward really was and a souvenir in motion of something needlessly lost forever by a man and his principles: the unfilled promise of someone who could have been an all-time great.
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Source: bleacherreport.com