Bellew: Andre Ward ain’t beating me

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: Tony Bellew (29-2-1, 19 KOs) says talks have started for a fight between him and Andre “SOG” Ward (32-0, 16 KOs) for a fight between the two of them before the end of the year. Bellew says he’s not going to lose to the 33-year-old Ward. Bellew is totally confident he’ll beat Ward if that takes place.

If Ward and Bellew do end up fighting each other, it’ll likely be at cruiserweight or in the 205 lb. range in the heavyweight division. Ward will likely push to have a rehydration limit to keep Bellew from gaining back too much weight. If Bellew agrees to the rehydration cap, he might lose the fight just based on that alone.

Bellew is up there in age, and it would be hard for him to limit his weight to a certain amount at this point. If Bellew can’t rehydrate to 213 at least, he might wind up weight drained enough for him not to have any chance of beating Ward. Bellew might want to think twice before agreeing to a rehydration clause for the fight.

Bellew said this on his social media site about the Andre Ward fight:

”Got a lot of respect for Andre SOG Ward. He’s a good man and a great fighter, but make no mistakem, he ain’t beating me! I’ve been wrote off so many times in my career and it seems I’m being wrote off again. The talks have begun and we could have a massive fight before the end of the year. Good fighter but it’s simple! I’ll end that winning streak of his. 👊 #I’m Game 👊. I think Dre should stay a LH! I don’t like it!”

The fact that Ward is interested in fighting Bellew tells me that he believes he can win this fight, because that seems to be how he picks his opponents. Ward felt he could beat Sergey Kovalev obviously, so he fought him. What are very noticeable is the fighters that Ward hasn’t picked from the light heavyweight division. Ward didn’t pick Adonis Stevenson and Artur Beterbiev.

Ward didn’t pick Oleksandr Gvozdyk. Those are tough outs for Ward, and he could lose all of those fighters if those fights take place. Those fighters hit hard, they don’t tire after 5 rounds, and they seem to be able to take body shots well. Those are all things that Koalev had problems with in his 2 fights with Ward.

Negotiating the Ward-Bellew fight might be hard if not impossible to do. If Ward insists on being the A-side, it probably won’t work. The PPV money would be coming from the UK side from Sky Box Office. Bellew is the big name in England, not Ward. If Ward pushes hard to be the A-side in the fight, then I don’t see how the fight can happen. I doubt that Bellew would agree to the same deal that Kovalev took in his 2 fights with Ward.

Bellew will likely want either a 50-50 deal or one in which he’s the guy making the better money. Bellew has options available to him in the short term. Ward doesn’t appear to have the same options, because there aren’t any big names at light heavyweight for him to fight any longer other than Adonis Stevenson.

That’s a fight that would interest the boxing public, but it’s also a very dangerous one for Ward. If he gets beaten by Stevenson, then he can forget about fighting Anthony Joshua in the short term. That fight might still happen if Ward took a year or two to rebuild his career, but the boxing pubic would want Ward to avenge his loss to Stevenson.

Ward vs. Bellew would have to take place in England for it to bring in a large gate and make money. That’s not a fight that would sell tickets in the U.S. Bellew is a good fighter, but he’s only known by the hardcore boxing fans in the U.S. The casual fans won’t know who he is and won’t are.

Bellew could hurt Ward in this fight if he catches him with one of his big power shots. Bellew seems to have improved a lot since he moved up from the 175lb division that he was fighting at in the past. Bellew had to drain himself to fight at light heavyweight.

After Bellew moved up to the cruiserweight division, his career took off. Sergey Kovalev gave Ward a lot of problems in their two recent fights in Las Vegas, Nevada. Bellew is a bigger puncher and more complete fighter than Kovalev. Ward struggled against Kovalev in the early rounds of both fights. It was only after Kovalev started to fade that Ward was able to come on and get the victory in both fights. Bellew doesn’t fade. He stays dangerous even in the later rounds of his fight.

Ward is going to have huge headaches against Bellew. Hopefully, Ward won’t start accidentally fouling like we saw from him in his recent fight against Kovalev on June 17 in their rematch. There were a number of accidental low blows from Ward in that fight. I couldn’t 5 low blows from Ward in the fight.

They each looked like powerful low blows that should have led to the referee stopping the action to give Kovalev a breather. It never happened. Kovalev had to fight through the pain. I don’t think Kovalev lost the fight to Ward because of the low blows, but it obviously didn’t help him any. Bellew is the type of fighter who will fight back if he gets hit low. He’s not just going to take it lying down if he gets hit low and the referee doesn’t do anything about it by taking charge of the fight and taking points off.

Ward would be better off trying to prove that he can clean out the light heavyweight division rather than moving up to cruiserweight to fight arguably the weakest link among the top fighters in that division in Bellew. I see it as a confidence issue on Ward’s part. I think if he honestly belieed that he could beat the like of Adonis Stevenson, Artur Beterbiev, Gvozdyk and Dmitry Bivol, he’d stay at 175 and clean out the division.

It would only take Ward about a year and a half to clean out the light heavyweight division if he were up to the task. I don’t think Ward could beat all of those fighters. I think he would lose one or more of those fighters. So instead of Ward trying to clean out the light heavyweight division, he’s moving up to cruiserweight to take on the weak link in Tony Bellew. The REALLY tough cruiserweights are Mairis Briedis, Murat Gassiev, Denis Lebedev and Oleksandr Usyk. Those are all naturally big fighters with a lot of power.

Bellew is more of a pumped up cruiserweight rather than someone who started his career in that weight class and belongs there. Bellew never fought any of those dangerous guys. Briedis was waiting for his fight with Bellew after beating Marco Huck. Instead of fighting Brieids, Bellew vacated his WBC cruiserweight title and fought the past his best David Hate, who fought with an injured Achilles tendon through most of the rounds.

Ward got a $6.5 million guarantee for his recent fight with Kovalev. I don’t think that’s going to happen if that money is going to be coming out of the PPV pot for the fight. You’re not going to see Bellew tie his purse on the PPV numbers the way that Kovalev did.