How much credit would Ward get today if he had beat Lucian Butte?

Nobody cares about Ward.

 

Ward's career got f***ed up by having a robbery baked into his then very good resume. He'd have been much better off rightfully taking the L in Kov-1, beating him in the rematch, then beating him a third time. If he fought even just one fight after doing that he'd be considered a lot greater.

Now most of what people will remember is a hollow "win" against a foreign fighter, and outpointing Carl Froch.

 

A win against Bute would have been massive at the time. Ward had just come out of super 6 clearing out the division, Bute was the only name outside of the tournament that had any kind of claim to be the top smw.

 

Crazier thing:

If Ward beat Bute and retired after Kovalev rematch, okay great.

If you recall before Canelo fought Bivol there were whispers of Andre Ward coming out of retirement to fight Canelo. Had Ward come back and beat Canelo...wouldve been HUGE.

 

If he had got Bute before Froch it would have further enjanced him.
After then not so much.

 

Bute's reputation was unfairly ruined by Froch really.
It's probably because he was favourite to win the fight, then everyone pretended he was exposed by Froch.
It should have recovered after Groves was beat by Froch too. But it didn't.
Bute actually did pretty well against Jack and Degale when he was old.
Froch was a bad matchup for Bute because Froch walked through his shots and brawled him basically.
Ward didn't have the capacity to do that.
Ward did not have the chin or power of Froch.
Froch ate some big lefts from Bute that would have hurt Ward probably.
And Bute ate bombs from Froch for a number of rounds, he did not go out easy.
There's no way Ward stops Bute, no way in hell. Bute would take Ward's shots all night.
And I don't think Ward would cleanly outbox Bute necessarily either.
But Ward could probably wrestle, smother, butt and win on points in his hometown.

 

Not sure what happened but the Froch fight in Nottingham was a big one in terms of audience and purse.