Billy's Boxing Blog

By William Trillo

Sometime around noon on Easter Sunday I called one of my journalist friends to go over an event we recently covered. During the chat my friend asked, “Did you watch the Ward fight last night?” I replied in the affirmative to which the writer quipped, “He’s kinda boring isn’t he?”

“Kinda Boring?’, I asked with a holler. “You must be grading Ward on the same curve he used in his post fight interview when he gave himself a B- for his performance.”

First off, that fight wasn’t boring. It was more along the lines of dull, monotonous and uneventful. Put that act in Las Vegas instead of the cushy back yard Oakland home of Ward and I guarantee people would be walking out and heading back to the casino.

And nice of Ward to grade himself with a B- after the fight. Let’s be honest here and grade that a straight C at best, had he not dropped Barrera we are slipping into a C-.

Yeah, Yeah, I know there are a lot of Ward honks out there that will start with their Ward is a world class talent, Pound for Pound etc. etc. On some levels I can give their opinions some validity. But for a guy as supposedly gifted as Andre is, he sure has a knack for putting a lot of fans to sleep. Something he couldn’t do to Barrera that night (putting him to sleep) and that was a statement he and his trainer Virgil Hunter desperately wanted to make.

Fail.

The only statement Ward made was he got in the ring with another guy he was supposed to blow out but instead made us all suffer through 12 pretty mediocre rounds.

I wonder if Ward happened to glance over at Sergey Kovalev who was in attendance at the fight. If he did he saw Kovalev licking his chops like a King who was ready to sink his teeth into the main course of his soon to be served up meal.

As expected Ward was more than noncommittal in his post fight interview when asked if Kovalev was next on his list, or if maybe he will fight one more time before that.

Allow me to cut through the charade and translate the gibberish, Ward has no intention of getting in the ring with Kovalev anytime in the near future. In fact, if things work out for Andre he will get another one of his famous tune-up fights, most likely Schiller Hyppolite, and that will round out 2016 for Ward. That will be followed up by a lawsuit with ROC Nation that will kill 2017. Tired of waiting around Kovalev will retire with all the 175 pound belts. It’s at that time that Ward will start accusing Kovalev of ducking him all along and Andre will go on to live in his Northern California Fantasy Land happily ever after.

On a side note…could Max, Lamps and Roy bow down any further for his holiness Ward? Had they bowed down just a wee bit more they could have grabbed their ankles, and you know what happens after that!!

I digress.

Jo Jo Diaz has shining star potential, great smile and world class hand speed. I have been covering this kid a lot here in Los Angeles and I wish him the best. I do see one huge flaw that needs to be addressed immediately. The kid moves straight in and straight out after a lot of his punches. Velez capitalized on this and I have seen others land punches on Diaz when he made that critical error.

This could be more than a minor tweak and it needs to be fixed before he takes on the cream of the crop at his weight…Gary Russell Jr., Leo Santa Cruz and
Vasyl Lomachenko.

Yeah…all three of those guys will jump on that mistake before Jo Jo (or the ref) can count to 10.

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This entry was posted on Monday, March 28th, 2016 at 11:31 am and is filed under Boxing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.