Going into Saturday night there was only one American without a loss in the Super Six Tournament, Andre Ward (21-0,13 KOs), and he showed the other Americans, Jermain Taylor and Andre Dirrell, exactly how it's done.
Ward came out ready to fight, ready to mix it up and ready to risk it all. From the start it seemed as if Ward wasn't going to be satisfied with two points for the tournament, he wanted three (a win is two points, a KO win is three).
Before the fight Jim Gray interviewed Dirrell (18-1, 13 KOs) ringside, and Dirrell stated that the atmosphere was similar to that of the 2004 Olympics when Ward was the only American competing for gold. Sound familiar?
Round 1 started with Ward working his lighting fast jab, setting a quick pace and standing in front of the WBA super middleweight champion Mikkel Kessler (now 42-2, 32 KOs) much more than I expected. It seemed as if Ward wanted to let Kessler know that he was in for a fight, or at least more of a fight than Dirrell showed Carl Froch.
In Round 2, Ward continued to land quick shots while keeping Kessler from getting set. Kessler was doing a nice job of cutting the ring off, but Ward would just step in and smother Kessler so that he couldn't get off. Ward was mixing up his offense enough to keep Kessler’s rhythm off.
I've always had tremendous respect for Ward, but he took my respect to a new level starting in the third round. He had complete control of the fight and seemed as if he could have spent the whole night pot-shotting and stepping in when "The Viking Warrior" got close, but instead he chose to demand the title instead asking for it. Ward began letting his right go with regularity, and punctuated the round with a right that had my head ringing.
As the fight went on it seemed as if Kessler was getting desperate and trying to turn the contest into a dogfight, but he was unsuccessful. Ward was just too sharp, too fast and was executing his plan with perfection. In the fourth, Ward landed a superb uppercut at the end of the round that would rock the champ, and at some point Kessler began bleeding under the right eye (perhaps from a head butt on the clinch). If you watched the fight not knowing who was who, you would have sworn Ward was the veteran of more than 40 fights. I did feel that in the later rounds, Ward was holding a bit much, but it wasn't enough to be deducted a point, and he was very smart about it — his holding was more Hopkins than Hatton.
Around the seventh you could notice the fight on Kessler's face, while his opponent didn't even seem to be breathing heavy. To add injury to insult, in the eighth, Kessler got cut from another accidental head butt, the one that would eventually end the fight.
From that point on, everyone knew it was only a matter of time before the fight would be stopped. In between rounds, Kessler was complaining to his corner that he could see out of his left eye. The end finally came in the 11th when the ref stopped the fight due to the cut over the left eye, and the fight went to the scorecards. Ward took the WBA super middleweight belt and his two points in the Super Six tournament by scores of 98-92, and 97-93 twice.
Ward did the same thing he did in 2004, he went into the ring the underdog and came out a champion. Ward took on the tournaments favorite and put on a one-sided boxing show, and now he must be considered the favorite to win. Kessler is far from done, he is still a big threat in this format. He is still a very-skilled, hard-hitting, smart tactician, who now has something to prove, which may make him even more dangerous. A little work on his inside game wouldn't hurt though.
Ward takes on Taylor (28-4, 17 KOs) next, if Taylor decides to continue in the tournament. If not, it will be (Allen Green 29-1,20 KOs). Kessler will next step into the ring with another undefeated fighter in Froch (26-0, 20 KOs), which should be a much better matchup for the Dane.
Dirrell takes on the hard-hitting undefeated Arthur Abraham (31-0, 25 KOs) sometime in early 2010. If Dirrell is smart he was taking notes on Ward's performance Saturday because it doesn't get much better than that.
