An Early Look at the Two Potential Super Six Finals Matches – Ward vs. Froch & Ward vs. Johnson:
With Andre Ward’s thumping victory over Arthur Abraham, the Super Six boxing tournament is now in its final stages and its endgame is becoming clearer. In three weeks, Briton Carl Froch will meet American veteran Glen Johnson to determine who will meet Ward in the tourney’s finals. The betting odds and this website favor Froch to win this encounter, but not by such a margin that the results are a slam dunk. Froch will need to fight and earn that win, and Johnson is just the sort of man to pull out an upset. So, while Ward will probably meet the Cobra to determine the winner of the Super Six, he might very well meet the Road Warrior instead. Proboxing-fans will publish a detailed analysis and prediction of the finals match when Ward’s opponent is established, but for now, a sneak preview of what will be one of the biggest fights of the year is in order.
Andre Ward vs. Carl Froch
Carl Froch has proven to be the biggest surprise of this tournament. Before the Super Six started, Froch was very lucky indeed to kayo Jermain Taylor after a dozen rounds of being thoroughly out-boxed. His narrow, ugly, disputed win over Andre Dirrell did not improve his reputation very much. It was not until the Mikkel Kessler fight that Froch started to look good. He lost that bout because Kessler was a somewhat better boxer and a somewhat stronger fighter, but Froch made it a close affair and proved to be a very tough customer. He followed up that win by out-boxing Arthur Abraham.
However, the model for fighting Andre Ward is not Kessler or Abraham, but Dirrell. In my opinion, Dirrell is the bigger phenom than Ward. He is faster and has the sharper reflexes, but Ward has proven much more confident and has a magnificent sense of ring generalship. Napoleon used to say that “the moral is to the physical as three to one,” and in that respect Ward’s mental fortitude and ring smarts vastly outweigh Dirrell’s physical gifts. Froch will find in Ward an opponent who is better than either Taylor or Dirrell, and on paper has little more than a puncher’s chance.
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Yet in Froch, Andre Ward is meeting his toughest opponent yet. The Cobra isn’t stiff and formal like Kessler, or likely to curl up behind a defensive shell like Abraham. If Froch can’t land his jab, he’ll turn puncher. If that doesn’t work, Froch will turn brawler and wrestler. The man won’t stop simply because his main game plan doesn’t work, and that is something that Andre Ward has never seen before. Furthermore, Ward has never seen a man as durable or as sure of himself as Froch. So there is much more to Ward vs. Froch than what the paper tally might say, and to think otherwise is foolish in the extreme.
Andre Ward vs. Glen Johnson
I firmly believe meeting Andre Ward will puncture the “ageless wonder” myth of Glen Johnson. Ward’s speed, reflexes and ring smarts will make Johnson look suddenly quite old. After all, no one thinks Sugar Shane Mosley has a problem “pulling the trigger” unless he is fighting a greasy fast phenom like Manny Pacquiao or Floyd Mayweather. Against Ward, Johnson will look a lot like Mosley has as of late. Turning to brawling and a high work rate won’t work either, not against a man as versatile as Ward. Instead, the “S.O.G.” will simply use his movement, speed and skill to turn Johnson’s machine gun tactics against him, landing counter after counter. If Ward were to be a heavy favorite against Froch, the clash of styles and prowess dictate he should be a landslide favorite against Johnson. The Road Warrior would do well against just about any 168 pounder in the division except Andre Ward, and I think Ward would hand Johnson his first knockout loss since Bernard Hopkins got him in 1997.
