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ANDRE WARD HOPING TO BE BACK IN THE RING BY APRIL OR MAY

By Ben Thompson | December 22, 2011
ANDRE WARD HOPING TO BE BACK IN THE RING BY APRIL OR MAY

"My wife is 3 months pregnant. I think we can squeeze another fight in towards the last trimester. I'm going to get an MRI tomorrow morning at 10:45 and, God willing, everything is fine," stated unified WBA & WBC Super Middleweight Champion Andre Ward, who informed us that, as long as everything checks out okay with his injured left hand, he's hoping to be back in the ring as early as April of 2012. "I would like to get back in the ring April or May. I would like that fight to be in Oakland or Las Vegas," Ward continued. As he pointed out, however, the date of his next fight depends on the extent of his injury, which he'll find out after a scheduled MRI later today. Ward first suffered the injury less than two weeks prior to facing former champion Carl Froch in the finals of the Super Six tournament.

"It was a scary situation, Ben. We got to Atlantic City 10 days out, so the week before the week of the fight. We got there and I sparred Thursday against Dhafir Smith, a fighter from Philadelphia, and I just hit him on top of his head, simple as that. I hit him on top of the head and I felt something in my hand. We finished the round; I didn't think anything of it. I cooled down, took my wraps off, took everything off, and I'm doing my ab work and I'm like, man, I just kept telling Virg and the guys, 'It feels wierd.' I'm feeling around and it just felt different. It felt like something was wrong. We put some ice on it, I went back to the hotel, I woke up at 2 or 3 in the morning and called Virg and said, 'Man, I'm concerned.' We got up, went to a doctor, we got the x-ray and he said it's not a fracture, it's not a break. He said it's just soft tissue damage, almost like a deep bruise, but it hurt so bad," Ward explained of the injury. "We wrapped it as best we could. The adrenaline took over early in the fight. I felt it, but it wasn't an issue, and then right around the 6th round, I was kind of by my corner and I hit him with a left hook and walked him back to the ropes, man, and I've never felt anything that painful in my hands before. I mean, the pain went all the way down to my feet."

Assuming all goes well with the MRI, Ward says he already looking forward to his next fight. Having already faced nearly all of the best fighters that the super middleweight division has to offer, the question is what's next for Ward? The fight that many assumed was next was a title unification with fellow undefeated champion Lucian Bute, however, Ward believes that Bute should first step his level of competition up and face one of the other top fighters in the division. "I said the winner of the Super Six deserves a chance to rest and to regroup. A lot of people just assumed that after this tournament, we were going to just rush into a fight with this guy and meet him in Canada. It wasn't time to really talk about it during the tournament because, obviously, I had to win tournament first, but now that it's over, all we're saying is, hey, we feel like he should beat an A-level guy. He should beat 2 A-level guys," Ward added. "I mean, I've heard [Andre} Dirrell say he wants to fight him. I think that would be a great fight. I like Froch's chance in that fight. But he's an opption. I mean, Mikkel Kessler, a rematch with him is an option. A move up to light heavyweight is an option. There's some options out there for us right now."

BE SURE TO CHECK BACK SOON FOR THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH WBA & WBC SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHT CHAMPION ANDRE WARD



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