Had Ward went up to 175, it would have been as much of a disadvantage as Dawson 168

Dawson did indeed call out Ward and he agreed to fight him at 168. No one put a gun to his head he agreed to do it. People love to overlook that fact as if Ward was the one who made the call out and said 168 or no fight.

 

Ward fought at 160 for MOST of his career before the S6.

He could easily make 160 and still be no less than 90%......

Ward needs to grow some huevos.

 

I know what he is saying, I'm just saying its clearly nonsense.

Dawson hadn't made 168 since 2006 and weighed in at 183 (apparently 200+ in ring) for his fight with Blades a couple of years later. I think we can safely say that his in ring weight, being conservative, for fights at 175 was 185+. so he was cutting nearly 20 pounds in to make weight vs Ward.

Again being generous lets say Ward's in ring weight is 175 (I suspect its more like 180) and that he would have trained and weighed in the same had the fight been at 175.

That would mean Chad having ~10lbs on him in the ring. Not insignificant for top fighters but still, for 180lb men not out of this world.

If the claim is that the amount of disadvantage (which is clearly not quantifiable anyway) being out weighed by 10lbs offers is equivalent to the disadvantage of cutting 20 lbs to make weight then its not even worth discussing. That's a good couple days of not eating properly and then dehydrating a matter of days before competing in a sporting event.

I don't blame Ward at all BTW, bottom line is Chad shouldn't have taken it, he either thought he could make the weight better than he did or he cashed out. Stupid or greedy take your pick.

Ward isn't that stupid or desperate for a payday, so he (rightly) won't make that offer to GGG

 

Ward's last fight was at light heavy.