Hailed as one of the greatest defensive boxers since the turn of the millennium, super-middleweight legend Andre Ward was rarely hit clean.
Ward won all 32 of his professional bouts before hanging up the gloves at the age of just 33 years old, having dominated at 168lbs and dethroned light-heavyweight star Sergey Kovalev to become a two-division champion.
At super-middleweight, Ward was the king of one of the division’s most stacked eras, defeating the great Mikkel Kessler to first claim world honours and then trumping the likes of Arthur Abraham and Carl Froch, the latter being a unification bout.
When interviewing Froch on his ‘All The Smoke Fight’ podcast, Ward informed ‘The Cobra’ that whilst he did not have him hurt during the fight, he felt the full effect of the Briton’s body shots during the week that followed.
“I was blocking the right to the head pretty good, but you got long arms, man, you kept hitting me with the straight to the body and I took it, but I was full of adrenaline and all of that. When the fight was over, [it hurt].
“I remember being on the plane with my family and I could barely move, probably for like a week, man. I probably had a bruised rib or something like that, man. So, I have got to give you credit for that. I thought I was going to take that to the grave but I will give you that.”
That 2011 unanimous decision victory makes Ward the only opponent in Froch’s career that the Nottingham fan-favourite did not defeat, with his other career loss to Kessler being avenged three years later in a rematch.
