ANDRE WARD W12 ALLAN GREEN; OMAR NINO W12 RODEL MAYOL

Much has been made of Andre Ward’s supposedly spectacular performance in outclassing Allan Green on Saturday night — with Showtime analyst Antonio Tarver comparing Ward to a young Roy Jones Jr. (“but against better opposition”).

Well, maybe, but I thought that Ward’s promoter, Dan Goossen, summed it up best in his post-fight congratulations: “Good job.”

That, for me, is what it was. A good job. No more, no less. It wasn’t exciting and it certainly wasn’t spectacular, although the hometown crowd at Oakland loved seeing Ward breezing through every round against a fighter deemed to be dangerous.

I like Ward as a person and I think he is a gifted boxer. What he had in front of him on Saturday night, though, was a lacklustre Green, a fighter who by his own admission came into the ring feeling “dead” after struggling in his training.

I felt that, against this version of Allan Green, Ward had the chance to do something special.

Ward’s trainer and godfather, Virgil Hunter, sensed this, telling his fighter that all Green was doing was “posturing”. It seemed to me that Hunter believed Green was ready to be stopped. The trainer assured Ward in the later rounds that Green had “no energy” — I’m sure Green would agree with that.

Ward, though, didn’t press the issue to the point where he might have got the stoppage. He landed nice, quick jabs and some well-placed hooks and right hands, and when Ward backed up Green against the ropes he worked well to the body with both hands. Ward wasn’t prepared to push himself to the next level, though, a level that would have seen him piling on so much pressure that he would be able to get Green out of the fight.

As I mentioned in the preview, a stoppage win by Ward was unlikely, but I thought it was possible — and it was definitely a doable result against the Green who showed up on Saturday night.

The win makes Ward the first fighter in the Super Six 168-pound tournament to win two bouts, and he will next face Andre Dirrell in Stage 3.

Green will meet Mikkel Kessler, but after Green’s dismal display on Saturday there won’t exactly be an outpouring of enthusiasm for the match.

What happened on Saturday night was the worst thing that could have happened in the Super Six tournament — one of the contestants beaten so badly that it was embarrassing to watch. Green not only didn’t win a round, he didn’t seem to win a minute of a round. It seemed to me that he only landed one good left hook all night.

Ward and Green at times appeared to be engaging in what Teddy Atlas calls a “silent contract” in which neither man goes all out to hurt the other.

As long as Ward wasn’t being challenged he was quite content to coast through the fight, sometimes jabbing and throwing dart-like punches, at other times bullying Green on the ropes and, all too often, simply ducking into clinches.

I thought that Ward had the chance to look dynamic, but instead he merely got the job done — the job in this case being to get the W and cruise on to Stage 3 of Super Six, unmarked and unruffled.

Now for the weekend fight that I really enjoyed, Omar Nino’s gritty, bloody victory over Rodel Mayol in their light-flyweight championship rematch in Mexico.

Nino, from Guadalajara, Mexico, had his back to the wall in the early rounds. He was cut over both eyes by the fifth and Filipino Mayol was landing the harder, more precise punches. However, with Mayol docked two points under the WBC’s head-clash rule (in which, if a fighter is cut in a clash of heads, the uncut boxer has a point deducted), Nino was still in the fight, and he kept his composure and gradually turned things in his favour with steady, disciplined and courageous fighting.

As Nino rallied, the crowd, which had gone ominously quiet for a while, sensed the swing in momentum and began to chant “Mexico, Mexico” — and Nino rode the wave of support to a unanimous and well-earned victory. He hammered a tiring Mayol in the eighth round, finally landing his left hook consistently and beating his man to the jab, and it appeared to me that Nino essentially outboxed, outfought and outgamed Mayol down the stretch.

I wrote in the preview that no matter who won I just hoped for a good, competitive 12-round boxing match, but the fight exceeded my expectations, with Nino surviving the cuts — and there were worryingly lengthy doctor’s inspections in the fifth and seventh rounds — to win by will power and mental toughness as much as anything. For me, this was the most enjoyable fight so far in the Top Rank series on Fox Sports Espanol.

Although I didn’t preview the fight, I must confess that the unbeaten Uzbek junior middle Sherzod Husanov had a tougher time than I would have expected against a game and sturdy Colombian Jhon Berrio on Friday Night Fights. It looked an even fight to me after six rounds, but Husanov closed strongly against a tiring opponent. In a fight that was waged up close, both men throwing hooks and right hands, Husanov was a bit sharper and a little smarter to take the majority but, for me, clear decision.

Russian 168-pounder Maxim Vlasov was very aggressive against substitute Jerson Ravelo and overwhelmed a once well-regarded boxer who was far more faded than I had expected. Ravelo tried to turn things around with right-handers but Vlasov beat him to the punch with a beautifully timed straight right hand to score a dramatic third-round KO win.

A couple of fights I didn’t have to see took place in South Africa. Unbeaten junior flyweight prospect Hekkie Budler kept his IBO belt with a split decision win over Filipino veteran Juanito Rubillar in their second successive closely scored fight. Budler’s win in the first fight was so controversial that I made Rubillar the favourite in the rematch although guessing that the young South African fighter would have learned enough from the first bout to eke out a win. Things were reversed in the IBO 168-pound title bout between South Africa’s Isaac Chilemba and unbeaten Australian southpaw Michael Bolling: I made Chilemba the favourite but guessed, wrongly, that Bolling could win. Chilemba had fought his last two bouts as a light-heavy and I feared he might drain himself getting down to 168 pounds at short notice. This did not prove to be the case. Chilemba dominated the bout although reports suggest that it was an unexciting affair.