Olympic champion Athens 2004 and former world champion in super middleweight and light heavyweight Andre Ward (32-0, 16 KOs) at one time very seriously thought about moving to heavyweight for a fight with the then undefeated champion Anthony Joshua (27-3, 24 KOs).
“HBO offered me a contract for three fights. The first was supposed to be a rematch with Kovalev, the second was a fight with Tony Bellew in the heavyweight division, and the third was a fight for the world heavyweight title with Anthony Joshua. That was the plan. I then weighed about 84-85 kilograms and wanted to go up to 87 kilograms. The offer was made. We were supposed to announce this after the second fight with Kovalev, but something made me change my mind. It was a difficult decision,” Ward said five years after finishing his professional boxing career. “I knew I could do to Joshua what Andy Ruiz did, of course I would do it my way, a little differently than Ruiz.”
Ward firmly believed in defeating the much bigger and stronger Joshua and has not changed his mind to this day.
“Not many people could imagine that I would be able to compete with Joshua because of his size and strength, but I don’t think that I would be inferior to an opponent just in physical terms. The key will always be my movement and mid-range combat. I had a plan for the fight. Joshua has an excellent and very dangerous right hand, but other than that I don’t see anything special in Joshua’s boxing. I could wear him down round after round combined with ducking his big right hand. This should have brought me victory. I've never had a problem with big guys and I've sparred with them both as an amateur and as a professional. I did the best job with those guys,” Ward said recently.
“Calzaghe may not have hit very hard, but he threw a million punches. Of course, I believe that I could have beaten him, but it would have been more difficult for me to defeat Calzaghe than Joshua,” Ward recalled and Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs).
