George Michael "Irish Micky" Ward, Jr. vs. "Sweet" Saoul Paul Mamby

Let's say Mamby didn't fall ill and they actually met when they were supposed to (September ninth of 1988, when Ward fought late sub Mike "Machine Gun" Mungin). I never would have known this was scheduled if not for the film The Fighter, the bar scene memorably mostly because of Amy Adams' delivery of the line "the hell kinda name is Saoul Mamby??" . Wahlberg's Ward explains that Mamby was a respectable globetrotter but that his time in the sun was done (the Bronx native was several years removed from his Cinderella man title run) and he'd serve as hopefully a launchpad to fulfilling Ward's own world title ambitions.

So let's review: Ward fights Mungin, who is said to have outweighed him by twenty pounds (this would be fight night rehydration weights - and this could well have been a cinematic embellishment; their official weigh-ins read Mungin 145 and Ward 136½ lbs), and loses a somewhat close unanimous decision over ten rounds with the southpaw natural welterweight. A month later, a seemingly convalesced Mamby is cleared to compete and loses a bizarrely scored majority decision to John Wesley Meekins - with two judges having it wide for Meekins (one a shutout!) and the dissenting third seeing a draw.

FWIW, earlier that year, Meekins had defeated Mungin by wide UD10.

I'm curious as to what the contracted division was supposed to have been. I would assume welter, since Mamby had not made the 140lb limit in the four years since his loss to Billy Costello. It makes more sense that Ward, who then was competing mostly at light welter, would simply move up a division rather than drag the faded former champ / bigger name down to a division he hadn't touched in ages. What is interesting about that is that Ward would've weighed that same 136½ and been disadvantaged no matter the opponent. That said, Mamby wasn't as physically large a man as Mungin and was a rock-solid consistent light welter from the late sixties through eighties.

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Depending on your pick based on their respective form in late '88, how does that reshape things? Does defeating an 18-1 young upstart in Ward instead of losing to a 19-1-2 upstart in Meekins put Mamby in the hunt for a major championship one last time, instead of languishing in the regional belt scene the rest of his career? Or, does taking a coup like Mamby that early instead of suffering the Mungin setback propel Ward onto the grand stage much sooner than versus Vince Phillips nearly a decade later?