ANDRE WARD W12 CARL FROCH

Two surprisingly close scores in Andre Ward’s dominant win over Carl Froch last weekend showed yet again that you can never be sure how a judge is seeing a fight.
 
British judge John Keane seemed closest to reality with his score of 118-110 in favour of Ward, while judges John Stewart of New Jersey and Craig Metcalfe of Canada each had Ward winning by 115-113 — one round from a draw on each card.
 
Frankly this fight wasn’t even close. Ward dominated the bout between rival 168-pound champions, adding Froch’s WBC belt to his WBA title and picking up the Showtime trophy as winner of the Super Sixtournament.
 
Ward ran away with the fight without running. He was often right in front of Froch, even pushing Froch back. When you see a genuinely tough fighter such as Froch looking to the referee for assistance then you know he is getting the worst of it.
 
Froch didn’t like it when Ward was smothering him on the ropes, yet on the outside the British boxer just couldn’t land the big punches that he needed to land in order to have a chance of winning the fight.
 
I think this was a case of a very good fighter not being allowed to get into the bout by an opponent who was a bit quicker, a bit more versatile, a bit smarter and who I think was physically and mentally more robust than Froch had anticipated.
 
If Froch made a mistake it was, I think, that he held back too much and tried to work things out instead of just going right at Ward. Then again, it isn’t so easy to carry the fight to your opponent when you are being made to miss and getting hit by sharp counter punches.
 
Froch was able to rally for victory against Jermain Taylor by putting the quicker, more stylish boxer under severe pressure and making him burn up energy. Ward was a different proposition, though. Froch could never mount a serious charge because Ward was steady, disciplined, controlled, elusive and able to switch tactics.
 
I thought that Froch did well when he used the jab, but in the jabbing duels Froch could never really get the upper hand. Ward jabbed stiffly to the body and had Froch guessing a bit, and Ward’s head movement meant that Froch was missing time and again with the big hooks and right hands. Ward isn’t what you could call a big puncher but he certainly hits with authority and Froch seemed to have been rattled a few times although never looking in trouble. Still, Froch was being made to pay for mistakes and he always had the look of a boxer who couldn’t quite figure things out. (The only round Froch won unanimously on all three judges’ cards was the fifth.)
 
Ward’s win was all the more meritorious when you consider he was boxing with an injured left hand in the second half of the bout. I don’t think anyone would call Ward an exciting fighter, but he is a superb technician who knows how to win. Success breeds success, and I can see the accolades mounting as Ward moves forward in his career. Froch, meanwhile, has nothing to be ashamed about. He lost to an elite fighter — one of the best in the world at any weight — and he convinced two judges that he was almost Ward’s equal. For Ward it is onwards and upwards, but Froch has a lot more to offer, too.
 
The Super Sixtournament overall took a little bit too long to complete, I feel, and it lost momentum when fighters dropped out, but I think that, many years from now, people who follow boxing will look back on the tournament as a remarkable venture that reflected credit on all those who were instrumental in bringing it to fruition.