Or is he going cold turkey? Has he just had terrible luck with management and fitness, or ... or is he suffering some psychological issues?
Being the gym rat he is, he probably has like 5 more good years before he starts fading, that's enough time to cement a great legacy. Whether he wants to do that is a completely different matter.
he has wasted 2 to 3 years of his career when he should have been fighting and his unwillingness to fight outside of california , never mind the rest of the world has severly dented his exposure, , he is very hard to beat but has a style that is not box office. his legacy will be good but not what it could and should be.
His extended breaks for whatever reasons (there have been several) maybe cause him to feel a "reset" mentality, in that he has to constantly start again and take "tune-up" fights. He's risking getting involved in a vicious cycle that threatens to impact what could be his legacy.
I appreciate that he's already achieved handsomely in his career, but he's been largely inactive for a long time now and keeps running into roadblocks that cause him to perhaps feel the need to reset.
Not hall of famer level. His best wins are Kessler, Bika and Froch. Weight drained non HOF chad dawson doesn't count. Ran to catchweight/175 because of Degale :good
I don't want to blame him entirely for what has happened. He felt something was wrong and he wanted to resolve it before it got to an irreversible state. He definitely lost a few years of his prime, but so did Ali (Even though that was not up to choice). Ward is a proud guy, a man of principle. And he's been plagued by injuries. So let's not blame him for that.
You mean fake injuries? How is it that he is a "gym rat" and always in great condition but refuses to make 168 and always has an injury when a fight is lined up. Inactivity for being selfish I understand but he just can't fight like a real champion and take fights unless everything is on his own terms including ref/judges.
