By John Gabriel Thompson: In the semi-final stage of the Showtime Super Six Super Middleweight Tournament, featuring six of the world’s premier super middleweights, WBA Super Middleweight Champion Andre “S.O.G.” Ward (24-0, 13 KO’s) easily handled the former IBF Middleweight Champion “King” Arthur Abraham (32-3, 26 KO’s) at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. A native of Oakland, California, Ward has been going in to each and every fight with a very pronounced and refined game plan specifically tailored to each opponent. He was elusive against Mikkel Kessler, out-jabbing a fighter known for his jab. Against Allan Green and Edison Miranda, fighters known for knocking out opponents who let them exchange, Ward smothered them, not giving either man room to work. Against Abraham, Ward followed the blueprint laid out to him by Andre Dirrell and Carl Froch.
Both Dirrell and Froch worked the jab in their fights against Abraham, stuck and moved, and cruised to unanimous decisions as Abraham elected to cover up behind his peek-a-boo defense. Ward followed this strategy to a “T,” except that Abraham looked in the first three rounds like he would throw a monkey wrench into the equation. In rounds two and three especially, Abraham came forward working behind his shell defense, but also incorporating a jab which allowed him to get to Ward. Ringside commentator Antonio Tarver said in the third, “I think the very best Arthur Abraham has show up tonight to put himself back in contention for the trophy.” Al Bernstein agreed, “It’s a different Arthur Abraham; he just doesn’t fight like this – coming forward.”
In rounds four and five Ward really started to establish his dominance with the jab. He was not afraid to jab the body either. Ward employed some dirty tactics in the fight, hitting Abraham low during clenches, landing a hard hook in the fifth during a break, and he wisely chose to clench whenever Abraham got too close. Regardless, it was an impressive performance. His jab and straight right got stronger and sharper as the rounds progressed, and his defensive movement was phenomenal. Abraham was criticized by the announcers for barely throwing, but it’s hard to throw when you’re being pummeled and even harder to hit what’s not there. Abraham only threw nine punches in round seven.
As Ward worked the jab and landed the occasional uppercut in round ten, Bernstein summed up the action when he said, “Arthur Abraham has never been stopped, but I’ll tell you, he’s taking a pounding here and there’s two rounds left.” The twelfth and final round was Abraham’s best since the third, as he landed with two ferocious left hooks. He landed because Ward was still in there fighting, to his credit, despite having won virtually every round. Judge Stanley Christodoulou scored it a shutout at 120-108 for Ward, which seemed somewhat unfair to Abraham. Judge Ingo Barrabas scored it 118-110 (as I did) and Judge James Jen Kin 118-111 all for Andre Ward.
I wrote an article on Friday questioning whether or not Abraham had so much as a chance against Ward, given Abraham’s recent resounding losses to Dirrell and Froch, contrasted to Ward’s superb performances against Kessler and Green. The old saying goes that “styles make fights;” which is to say just because Ward beat Kessler, and Kessler beat Froch, and Froch beat Abraham, ergo Ward beats Abraham. However, we’ve seen so many examples in boxing where this is not the case (see the fights between Shane Mosley, Antonio Margarito, and Miguel Cotto). In the comment section of my article on Eastside Boxing, fans seemed divided between two camps: one stating that Ward would follow Andre Dirrell’s blueprint for beating Abraham in sticking and moving; whereas the other group felt that Ward would revert to the style of trading on the inside and trying to impose his physicality as he had in his last two fights, thereby granting a puncher’s chance to Abraham. Ward did establish his physicality, but he did so wisely at the end of the jab. Ward will now progress to the finals of the super middleweight tournament where he will meet the winner of the upcoming match between Carl Froch and Glen Johnson.
In a non-televised undercard Chris “The Nightmare” Arreola (31-2, 27 KO’s) from Los Angeles stopped Nagy “Dominican Dynamite” Aguilera (16-6, 11 KO’s) in the third round. Aguilera has now lost four of his last five bouts, including a second round TKO at the hands of Sam Peter and a ten round unanimous decision loss to Antonio Tarver in Aguilera’s last bout in October. Arreola has now won three straight (two by knockout) since his majority decision loss to Tomasz Adamek in April of last year..