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Ward Beat Froch with Broken Hand
Double fracture in training had no ill-effects
Posted Jan 03, 2012 by Chris White
Having defeated Carl Froch in Atlantic City before Christmas, you would think Andre Ward may have come out of the fight with a few cuts and bruises, but you maybe wouldn’t have expected that he would have entered the ring with a broken hand, and still left with the WBC and WBA super-middleweight titles.
The fight turned out to be a particularly one-sided affair, with Froch backed to leave the US with both titles – at least on the British side of the Atlantic – but the man from the midlands struggled to get going. This can happen with a lot of fighters, and there are a number of reasons, (and excuses), given, but when you find out that your opponent has beaten you with a broken hand, it can throw your next few fights off course too.
Ward was particularly impressive in the final of the Super Six contest, and showed no signs of the injury he sustained in training, landing several key punches on the Englishman. So did Ward find out afterwards that he had the broken hand? That would be most likely right? That in delivering one of those blows on Froch, he got the angle slightly wrong and cracked the bone. Erm, no.
Ward sustained the injury two weeks before the fight but told ESPN that “the fight had to go on. It was inevitable that it would get banged up once or twice, and I felt it throughout the fight, but I just couldn’t pull out. I got through the early stages on adrenaline, and then the pain kicked in, but we got through it and won, so it’s worth a bit of pain.”
Promoter Dan Goossen said that the doctor who looked at Ward’s hand after the fight revealed that the injury in his hand was at least a fortnight old, making it impossible that the injury was sustained during the clash with Froch.
So while Froch flattered to deceive throughout the fight, in what he called “peak fitness’, Ward impressed from the early stages, and that coupled with the news that he was already suffering from a broken hand, makes the win and performance even more impressive.
Does this make Ward’s victory even more impressive? Who would you like to see him fight next? Tell us here, on Twitter @ImagineBoxing and on Facebook by clicking here.