By Norm Frauenheim-
Roy Jones Jr. continues to fight and we wish he wouldn’t. Andre Ward doesn’t fight and we wish he would.
It’s hard to explain and harder to understand. Then again, business-as-usual has never made much sense in a sport where the primary goal is to render the other guy senseless. In one form or another, it gets repeated, ad nauseam. Ward might not be the worst example. He’s just the current one.
Ward is still included among the top five on those pound-for-pound lists, yet he’s persona-non-grata in discussions about middleweight Gennady Golovkin’s options after a predictable stoppage of Daniel Geale in New York, or speculation about light-heavyweight Sergey Kovalev’s next move after a likely victory Saturday over Blake Caparello in Atlantic City. This was the same Ward who beat Carl Froch and would probably be the pick to beat him in a rematch. Yet, Ward was bypassed without a mention in ongoing discussions for a Jan. 24 bout with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., who once flirted with the idea of Ward, yet moved on.
Ward fought once in 2012. Once in 2013. He hasn’t fought at all in 2014. Shoulder surgery contributed to the inactivity. More problematic, however, is a lawsuit filed last December against promoter Dan Goossen. Ward is attempting to end a contract that ties him to Goossen until November 2016, according to an arbiter’s ruling — one of two that upheld the deal.
In the wake of the filing, Ward said he planned to be active in 2014. He told www.ringtv.com that he hoped to be back in the ring in March or April. The closest he’s been, however, is on the talking side of the ropes. He’ll be there Saturday night as an analyst for HBO’s Boxing After Dark telecast of the Brandon Rios-Diego Chaves from Las Vegas in triple-header telecast that will include Kovalev-Caparello.
Ward is in legal limbo. Amend that. More like legal hell. The lawsuit is a messy web that includes Ward co-promoter Antonio Leonard, who alleges Goossen failed to pay him for his work in Ward’s last fight, a unanimous decision over Edwin Rodriquez in November, 2013. No telling when, if ever, it all gets resolved.
The longer it goes, the more Ward has to lose. He’s 30, his prime. Inactivity also comes with a price to his reputation. He’s unable to prove the naysayers wrong and there are plenty. Fair or not, Ward is known to be difficult in negotiations. He was criticized for not traveling to Europe for a bout in the super-middleweight’s Super Six tournament, which he eventually won. Mention his name as a possibility for Golovkin at 168 pounds or Kovalev at 175, and he’s immediately dismissed as a fighter unable to sell tickets or generate television ratings. Floyd Mayweather Jr. labored under the same assumption until he was allowed to prove it wrong with history’s two highest pay-per-view audiences against Oscar De La Hoya and Canelo Alvarez.
As long as he doesn’t fight, the unbeaten Ward can’t prove himself as a worthy attraction. Until he can, criticism of him from Golovkin’s promoters or Kovalev’s managers is gratuitous. Until his legal situation is cleared up, few would agree to fight him anyway. That’s not good for him or a business that can’t let a valuable resource waste away. It’s already been a year of declining pay-per-view numbers. In a non-PPV bout, Golovkin’s ratings fell in his third-round stoppage of Geale. According to Nielsen Media Research, the bout averaged 984,000 viewers, down from the 1.41-million average for Golovkin’s stoppage of Curtis Stevens in November.
The decline has been blamed on the quick stoppage. The theory is that there would have been more viewers if the fight had gone beyond just three rounds. Golovkin’s victory over Stevens went into the eighth. A summer lull also been blamed. But both sound like spin. Sure, maybe, many of the usual customers were at the beach instead of in front of their television screens. If they were, however, it might have been because one fighter, Golovkin, is from Kazakhstan, still better-known for Borat than GGG. Then, there was Geale, who is from Australia, better known for Russell Crowe and Crocodile Dundee than middleweights.
The numbers, pay-per-view or non-PPV, would have been a lot higher had Golovkin fought Ward. That’s a safe guess, a slam dunk. If only a Golovkin-Ward, or even Kovalev-Ward, was a sure thing.
It’s not. Without it, the decline in television numbers figures to continue. It makes me think of an old lyric by Jones, who will be in Atlantic City as an HBO analyst for Kovalev-Caprello Saturday one week after his fifth-round stoppage of somebody named Courtney Fry in Latvia.
In 2002, Jones released a rap CD that included Ya’ll Must Have Forgot. Jones re-states his pound-for-pound claim in the old song. More than a decade later, it has a different meaning, yet might be as relevant as ever. Fans might forget Ward in a business that needs him and them.
