Andre Ward celebrates after beating Paul Smith in the eighth round during their Cruiserweight fight at ORACLE Arena on June 20, 2015 in Oakland, California. Alexis Cuarezma/Getty Images
Boxing
Andre Ward fights to avoid a boxer’s bad ending
With the biggest bout of his career looming, he opens up about his family and his faith
By
Brin-Jonathan Butler
August 4, 2016
Andre Ward, perhaps the best prizefighter in the world, inherited the mantle from a line of leading men. Yet his role in boxing was never descended from Muhammad Ali’s brash hero, Mike Tyson’s villain, or Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s “Money”-obsessed anti-hero.
In boxing’s family of messy, dark characters, Ward is a virtual unknown, despite his success. While others sought the limelight, he resisted it, closely guarding his privacy and a family story that could rival any of his predecessors for pathos.
On Aug. 6, Ward will face Colombian Alexander Brand at Oracle Arena in Ward’s hometown of Oakland, California. (The arena’s star attraction, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors, is a friend and occasionally accompanies him to the ring carrying his championship belts.) If he wins as expected, Ward is slated to fight Russian light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev in Las Vegas on Nov. 19, in what many believe could be professional boxing’s best fight in well over a decade.
No fighter today more skillfully solves boxing’s best crosswords in blood than Ward, who is 29-0 as a professional with 15 knockouts. He was the longtime world champion as a super middleweight, one of the most dangerous divisions in the sport. But he moved up to light heavyweight last year so he could face Kovalev, a fearsome puncher, who is 30-0-1 with 26 knockouts and in 2011 beat an opponent so badly that he died shortly after the bout.
Every prizefighter crosses his own Rubicon before he climbs half-naked between the ropes and steps foot on an illuminated canvas. In the short term, they’re only one punch away from permanent injury or death. Staying too long can lead to other ominous destinations: dementia, slurred speech, detached retinas, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, Parkinson’s disease. Joe Louis was left a coked-out wreck. Ali was silenced and imprisoned in his body. Tyson plunged into economic and existential free fall. Only a few have performed boxing’s ultimate magic trick: returning safely with their faculties, money and legacy intact.
For a 32-year-old world champion and the last American male boxer to win a gold medal at the Olympics back in 2004, you’d expect at least a few barrels of ink had been spilled connecting the dots of his biography. But beyond a perfunctory interview here and there, it’s slim pickings.
“I’ve never talked about my story before,” Ward said. “I didn’t feel like I had to. I didn’t want people to grab a hold of that and just run with the typical African-American who came from the ghetto.”
USA’s Andre Ward, from Oakland, Calif., right, throws a punch to Belarus’ Magomed Aripgadjiev during the light heavyweight boxing final in the 2004 Athens Olympic Games at the Peristeri boxing hall in Athens Sunday, Aug. 29, 2004. Ward won the match to capture the gold medal.
AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
When I visited Oakland in May, his longtime publicist gave me his gym’s address and warned, “There’s no signage anywhere, but don’t think you are in the wrong place when you arrive.”
Ward trains at Virgil Hunter’s Hayward, California, gym, next to the San Mateo Bridge. There’s a strange metaphor at work as you pull a third U-turn, trying to distinguish one anonymous beige cluster of office buildings and warehouses from the others, all moated with nearly vacant parking lots. Ward’s identity to those outside his private circle has been just as elusive as where he trains. The symmetry is apparent in the difficulty his opponents have had in trying to penetrate his defenses.
I finally spotted a mural of Ward on the side of a van parked behind a warehouse. On the other side was Ward’s white, custom-built truck, the license plate reading “SOG” (son of God).
Ward was inside, being stretched into a pretzel by his strength and conditioning coach. Every stitch of clothing he was wearing was from his Michael Jordan clothing line, a sponsor since he turned professional after the Olympic gold. Indeed, he looked less like a stereotypical boxer than an MTV heartthrob or an Abercrombie & Fitch model.
There’s charm in his smile and a warm handshake. But he also has the poised glance of a master croupier, giving away nothing while sizing up and processing all available data.
He cut to the chase within 20 seconds.
“I’m not really sure what your agenda is,” he said. “I don’t play the game of me pouring my heart out for 30 minutes and then some writer has his narrative in place and just wants a few of my quotes to validate his story.”
I reply that I believe he’s the best boxer in the world. But I’ve never cheered for or against him. How can he be that good while still being a cipher?
Ward turned this over for a second. Then he grinned and began nodding. “I can work with that.”
As Ward finished his workout, he offered to drive me around Oakland to the many homes where he lived growing up. But he paused after putting his key in the ignition.
“I’ve never talked about my story before,” Ward said. “I didn’t feel like I had to. I didn’t want people to grab a hold of that and just run with the typical African-American who came from the ghetto.”
“I’ve never talked about my parents before and some of their struggles. I always wanted to protect their names and protect who they were. I didn’t want my story to be reduced to just another cliché, rags-to-riches, kid from the ghetto and all that. For the most part, I grew up middle-class. I know I’m very guarded. How do you think I survived? Guarded is what got me by. But I want people to know what I’ve come through and overcome because maybe that can inspire somebody.”
Along with his older half-brother, Jonathan, Ward was raised by his white father in Hayward and North Oakland. His African-American mother was rarely present, battling an addiction to crack cocaine and living on the streets of San Francisco for most of 20 years.
Andre Ward kneels in the corner after defeating Ben Aragon in the third round by TKO in a 6 round Middleweight Bout on June 18, 2005 at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, Tennessee.
Chris Graythen/Getty Images
“
When I speak about this, I don’t come from an ignorant place: I know what it is to be biracial when both sides don’t accept you and you have that confusion of not feeling accepted,” he said. “You’re left asking, ‘Who am I?’ ”
Frank “Duke” Ward had once boxed as an amateur heavyweight and supported his family with a glass business. Ward told me he grew up always thinking of his hulking father as Superman. Frank Ward, the son of an alcoholic, never touched a drop.
But gradually his son discovered the old man had his own kryptonite: He had secretly battled addiction to heroin since before Ward was born. Ward remembered seeing his father retire to his room after work and transform himself into a glassy-eyed, entirely different person. “I thought he was taking sleeping pills. He’d be fired up and then be a zombie.” When Ward was 12, he found a needle in his father’s room and naively brought it to him asking where it might have come from. Frank Ward told his son he’d found it in the street and didn’t want anyone to find it. Ward shook his head, smiling. “I never wrapped my head around the heroin thing until I was a lot older.”
His father remained a functional addict for years, but as his illness worsened the family home was lost. Frank Ward would seek treatment to get clean. And then he’d relapse. This pattern was repeated for many years over the course of Ward’s adolescence.
Understanding that past brings perspective. “Boxing is just a season,” Ward said. “This isn’t my life. It’s what I do, it’s not who I am. Which doesn’t mean I don’t take it seriously. I give it everything I have.”
vs Jesse is that leaves Crawford with nobody to fight 
) but both want & have no problem calling out and wanting to take out The Salt Water Moses
