Its not an excuse. Ward was the better fighter. But call a spade a spade, the mother ****er fights dirty and he does it transparently. Very good fighter. Fact is He was dirty vs Miranda and he was dirty in this fight.
He's Son of God; with someone as pious as Ward, they couldn't have been intentional. Some would say he's a "cagy veteran". That second head-butt was just nasty though, especially in slo-mo. Kessler was billy goated, everyone saw and commented on it.
I'll agree a bit with this. He sometimes was holding Kessler and hitting him, but on other occasions it was Kessler who was holding him and Ward was able to get one hand free and punch him. The headbutts were completely unintentional imo.
He beat him fairly easy. I only know one of the headbutts was intentional, i don't think the rest were.
How about the one where he charged in straight with his head looking down, with no intention of throwing a punch... the 2nd headbutt. How is that unintentional.............
Fine, well put. But let's not pretend that he didn't mean to. He was intentionally throwing butts. And he was the better fighter. Both are true.
Ward's got some dirty tactics. I generally don't think that much of fouls though, unless it's real extreme (such as Pedroza-LaPorte). Most top fighters commit their share of illegal tactics, and have to deal with them from opponents as well.
Agreed completely. Most fighters have dirty tactics in thier arsenal. It seems that Mr. Ward uses it as part of his every fight gameplan now however. Worth noting.
There was at least one headbutt (in the 4th, which buzzed Kessler) that looked COMPLETELY intentional. And while the rest of them might have been "unintentional", he was leading with his head every time he went for a clinch. Still, he fought smart dirty. The commentators didn't even seem to notice it until the 8th or 9th round. The ref didn't appear to notice it. Most of what he did was either on the ref's weak side or looked incidental. He had a couple of low blows as well that weren't called.
Is this why he doesnt want to travel? Maybe he feels he wont be able to fight his fight if he leaves his comfort zone.
Intentional head-butts are illegal. The thing is, it all depends on the ref to determine that. In this case, I don't think Ward was even warned and could have sworn that he stopped to wipe the sweat off of Ward's forehead. Same with low blows. Kessler fights too clean for his own good.
Bernard Hopkins does the same and he's universally recognized as a dirty fighter. Like the TS says, let's just call a spade a spade. It still gets the W.