Joe Calzaghe moved up and fought the light HW champion - why can't Andre Ward?

Why can't GG move up and fight Ward?

He's not a spring chicken if he wants to actually be somebody the time is NOW.

Your foreign punching bags aren't into taking many chances.

 

He didn't move up because he got Dawson to move down to him. He likely had his number anyway.

 

Calzaghe moved up to fight his grandfather and another fighter who was 5+ years past his prime.

 

well theres a lot joe didn't do at smw, an awful lot in fact.

joe didn't make any defences of the major smw titles apart from a single one versus Bika, so he has that yet to accomplish at smw which froch, ward and ottke have all done. In fact about 20-30 other fighters have done more than joe at smw in this respect.


joe left smw before he could accomplish these, I wonder why he ran so fast - the big paydays against perceived overthehill fighters I think and the danger of making a major world title defence madehim move faster than he ever had.

 

however that's not taking away anything from joes 21 defences of the wbo title, on par with defending the commonwealth belt for most if the time he had it. well done joe for that.


well done joe for maintaining national/commonwealth level for 10 years (and exceeding it once for just over half an hour of that 10 years).

 

:yep

 

yeah its a shame he didn't try to defence major titles more than once.

but then seeing how bika hurt him real bad, I can understand why he didn't want to do it again. he didn't want tough fights like bika, his words not mine. I guess joe must have thought bika being a tv show fighter would be an easy will McIntyre type, but when he got a rude awakening from him he quit the IBF title immediately to go back to his usual diet of his entire career of wbo easy meat manfredo types.

 

People are forgetting that in 2003, a fight with Ottke was unable to be made. Without fighting Ottke, there was nothing left to achieve. Yet he stayed at SMW. Then the following year, he said he'd got nothing left to accomplish and he wanted big money fights in the U.S. and he knew that he needed to move up to LHW. Yet he remained at SMW for another 4 years. Joe should have moved up a lot sooner than he did.

In my opinion, Andre will move up soon. I think he's only stayed as long he has, because of injury. He's hardly fought since the Super Six. I can't see him fighting the calibre of guys that Joe was fighting in his early 30's.

 

And not put Gennady to school, you mean.

 

I'm not convinced. I have yet to see Ward display much ambition to move out of Super Middleweight and he's doing the same thing Calzaghe was doing after the Ottke fight proved incapable to make - talking about fighting opponents from other division if they come to him - also, not forgetting, Calzaghe was very injury prone as well so they're a bit similar on that front. Maybe Ward will prove me wrong, or maybe we'll be sitting here in 10 years time complaining about Ward's lack of ambition in the same way people complain about Calzaghe's.

 

Ward seems like a very cautious man. There's no reason for him to rush but there's also no reason to stay at 168. He who dares wins...or possibly gets KTFO.

 

So why the Calzaghe double standard? If Ward moves up 2 years from now it will still be MUCH faster than do did it. Why are you not discussing that? Double standards?