Andre Ward: “Golovkin didn’t take the fight once we made them an official offer. I don’t think that fight will ever happen”

Former super middleweight champion Andre Ward returned to the ring on March 26th against top 10 light heavyweight contender Sullivan Barrera. Ward, 32, out boxed and out worked Barrera over 12 rounds and set the stage for potential fights with Sergey Kovalev and Gennady Golovkin. When Ward is not in the ring he also doubles as a commentator for HBO sports.

I recently had a chance to speak with Andre Ward and get his views on some of the popular topics going around the sport. Andre shared his thoughts on Alvarez vs. Khan and talked about the possibility of a Alvarez-GGG bout. Ward also talked about a fight with himself and Golovkin and if he could ever see that fight happening. Additionally Andre shared his views on the Mayweather-Pacquiao bout and if he thinks that fight hurt the sport. Here is what Andre Ward had to say.

Jenna J: Amir Khan faces Canelo Alvarez on May 7th, and not many people are giving him a chance. What do you think of that fight?

Andre Ward: I think Amir respects Canelo and I think that Amir in his whole career has acted like a fighter, which is look for the biggest and best challenges. Some times you look at that big challenge and sometimes you fail, and sometimes you succeed, but you have to respect Amir daring to be great.

I see a lot of people writing him off and I think that’s a mistake, I think Amir is plenty big. Does he have to fight the right fight? Absolutely, but this isn’t a fight where Canelo Alvarez can go in here and not have his guards up and not be on point either. It’s a great fight for both guys, you gotta take your hat off to both guys for taking this risk.

Canelo is taking a risk, Amir is no pushover. These are the types of fights we clamor for, and I just think that instead of rushing to judgment and trying to be the first to say that, “This guy doesn’t have a shot,” I just think that people should build excitement about the fight because we don’t know what’s going to happen and just enjoy and lets see what happens.

Jenna J: A lot of people want to see Canelo win this fight with Khan because they want to see a fight between Canelo and Gennady Golovkin. As a fight fan, do you want to see that happen?

Andre Ward: I’m not a fan of Golovkin, I’m not biting my nails waiting until he fights again, no disrespect but that’s just the reality. I respect Canelo and I really like Canelo’s game and I got nothing personal against Golovkin but with our history and everything like that, I’m not necessarily clamoring to see him fight or even keeping track of what he’s doing to be honest with you.

Jenna J: You recently beat one of Abel Sanchez’s fighters. Do you think Abel would ever risk Golovkin against you?

Andre Ward: I don’t know, I think that’s a question for him. It’s pretty simple with me in terms of our history. There was a lot of talk about it, my name kept coming up, my weight class at that time kept coming up and it got my attention.

I was raised in the gym and as a person on old school principles. It’s not that hard, if two guys want to fight, we pick up the phone, my people are not hard to reach. You make an offer and you have serious talks about potentially fighting and I think they were more concerned about posturing in the media and different things like that. They didn’t take the fight once we made them an official offer.

Of course there’s going to be mud slinging that says that, “Oh this didn’t happen, Ward’s lying.” I’ve never been known as a liar, I don’t fabricate things, it really happened and they didn’t want to fight and once I saw that, I’m not the type that’s going to go on every website and try to expose him.

It is what it is, they didn’t want to fight, they want to do other things and that’s fine, I moved up and unfortunately I don’t think that fight will ever happen but I think it would have been a great fight. I don’t think that would have been an easy fight for either one of us and I think it would have been a great match up and I think the fans would have really enjoyed it.

Jenna J: Now that you’re at light heavyweight, are you now done with ever moving down to 168lbs?

Andre Ward: Yeah, that’s one thing that I always said and if history has any way of teaching us, you can’t go up and then come back down. I’ve never personally seen a guy move up and move back down and be successful. Maybe a 130lb’er moving up to 135 and then coming back down, maybe something like that but when you go up seven or eight pounds, it’s just not healthy, it’s just not the right thing to do. You can short circuit your whole body and just not be the same, and that’s not a smart thing to do.

Jenna J: Right now the attention on the sport seems to be far less than it was last year. Do you think the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight hurt the sport?

Andre Ward: I don’t think that it should have hurt the sport, but I think that the negative press was very unwarranted and maybe I’m crazy and I know I’m in the minority but I was fortunate to call that fight on the international broadcast and I really enjoyed the fight.

I really enjoyed the fight because I was seeing everything that was taking place and I think that the casual boxing fans were sold on the fact all these years that Manny was the guy that was not only gonna beat Floyd but knock Floyd out. The fight finally came off and it didn’t happen and I think people felt like they got juked, which I don’t think really was the case.

I think that you had two great fighters that met and I think it was a very good fight, Manny was pushing the pace early on and Floyd couldn’t make any mistakes. Floyd got hit maybe two times and was visibly kind of buzzed a little bit, he bit down like a champion and made the adjustments.

There was high drama in Floyd’s corner with Floyd Sr. telling him to step it up and Floyd did that. If there was any drop off in the fight, I think it was maybe in the last three rounds where I think Manny took his foot off the gas for whatever reason, and Floyd did what he had to do to kind of close the show.

I thought it was a very good fight, I thought early on it was a competitive fight, it’s what I expected. I enjoyed it, and when I saw the backlash, I understand it and I think that’s coming from the casuals but for lawsuits to be filed, that’s unbelievable. I stand on that position, I really thought it was a good fight.