By Norm Frauenheim
Andre Ward has talked retirement not just once, but at least twice, since his controversial victory over Sergey Kovalev. It sounds like some early posturing in negotiations that began the moment the news conference commenced in the wake of the 114-113 scores that favored Ward in November.
This time, Ward dropped the possibility in an interview with Rolling Stone. Never take anything off the table. Ward hasn’t. Retirement represents the nuclear option. Push that button and there’s no rematch.
It puts pressure on Kovalev, who was predictably unhappy with the decision and wasted no time in exercising the rematch clause in his side of the contract. That clause gives Kovalev some legal and financial leverage, but only if Ward continues to fight.
If he retires, that rematch clause wouldn’t buy that proverbial cup of coffee, much less a refill.
“I really just got to take my time right now because I really don’t have to fight anymore,” Ward told Rolling Stone.
He went on to say that he wanted to be “sure that every decision that I make and every fight that I take is the right situation because if it’s not, I don’t know if it makes sense to continue on.’’
Translation: Back off Kovalev.
Ward repeatedly suggested that he would continue to fight and even said there he had personal reasons to consider a rematch with the smart and dangerous Kovalev, who must have spent the Holidays wondering why he let Ward off the hook after knocking him down in the second round.
“You have to entertain [a rematch] and I would love to put my stats on in such a way that there isn’t a conversation about who won and who lost,” Ward said.
Then, he added: “Proving something to people is a tricky thing to get involved in. If we did the rematch it would be more just to silence Kovalev and silence his team and to just put a stamp on the rivalry we had.’’
There’s a strong suggestion in those words that Ward would like to silence more than just Kovalev and the Russian’s corner. There are also the fans and media who argued that Ward got an early Christmas gift.
His immense pride compels him to prove his critics wrong. It always has. I was there, at the Athens Games in 2004, when he was the last American man to win Olympic boxing gold on a day when nobody gave him a chance.
The U.S. men’s Olympic program was a mess then and has been ever since. But Ward rose above it all, the last American man to stand stop the medal stand’s summit. He didn’t lose in Athens and he hasn’t lost as an amateur or a pro since 1997.
To this day, Ward and his trainer, Virgil Hunter, talk about losing to Ernie Gonzales and John Revish as if it happened yesterday. He was 13 or 14 years old, yet he remembers the scorecards, the judges and the lessons. Those long-ago defeats are at the heart, the beginning, of what still drives Ward.
He finds a way. There’s an ongoing debate – as reasonable as it is noisy – about whether Ward’s way was good enough for a victory over Kovalev. Only a rematch for the light-heavyweight title and perhaps pound-for supremacy will settle that. The good news is that Ward knows that, mostly because nobody will let him forget about it. A rematch gives him another chance to say he was right the first time around.
Still, the negotiations are problematic for a couple of reasons. Above all, the money just doesn’t appear to be there anymore. Ward-Kovalev was a pay-per-view loser, generating a reported 160,000 buys, or nearly half of modest expectations.
Would promoters even try to go the pay-per-view route again? In boxing’s current business climate, can either Ward or Kovalev get a raise in a rematch? Ward collected a $5 million purse. Kovalev was guaranteed $2 million. How much money would be in the total purse for a rematch? How would it be split?
Ward told Rolling Stone that “it’s not about the money anymore.’’
I’m not sure it ever has been. It’s been about that pride. It motivates him to fight again in an answer to his critics. In part, it’s measured by his percentage of the total purse.
Offend that pride, however, and he’s shown that he’s willing to walk. He fought only once over nearly three years at the peak of his prime in large part because of a legal dispute with late promoter Dan Goossen.
Retirement? Not likely. Not at 32 and not with a chance to extend his unbeaten record, including a shot at an undisputed claim on the top spot in the pound-for-pound debate. Then, of course, there are all of those critics. Ward has another chance to do what he’s been doing all of his life:
Answer them.