Andre Ward was days away from signing an incredible two fight deal that would’ve seen him move up to cruiserweight and then heavyweight.
The two-division world champion hung up the gloves undefeated in 2017 after beating Sergey Kovalev for a second time. He told Shawn Porter in a recent interview that he was originally considering retirement after the first fight.
Then, after stopping the Russian in the eighth, he started to get ‘the itch’ to stay active.
“I made the decision to do it again – but I knew going into that fight that was it. I had the worst camp of my career for Kovalev 1, the best camp of my career for Kovalev 2, because there was light at the end of the tunnel.
“I was light, I was sharp, no injuries. I know I was gonna stop that dude.”
If he would choose to do so, there were two battles with Brits set up. Ward revealed that facing Tony Bellew at cruiserweight and then Anthony Joshua at heavyweight was on the table.
“After that fight, before I retired I started getting the itch. Wow, wait a second – there’s some new deals on the table. HBO coming with a new deal … And the plan, if I stayed around, was gonna be Tony Bellew at cruiserweight and then I was going for Joshua at heavyweight.”
Bellew had moved up to heavyweight to face fierce rival, David Haye, and therefore wasn’t the WBC 200lb champion at that stage.
Joshua, on the other hand, had plenty of belts. He had just knocked out Wladimir Klitschko in the performance of his career to unify two of the four major heavyweight titles.
Ward, as fans well know, didn’t follow through with the plans. He told Porter that the passion for fighting was gone.
“The deal was two days away from being announced … I was doing pre-camp stuff. And all of a sudden I woke up one morning, and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders. I’m like laying on the floor, early in the morning, I told my wife ‘I don’t think I’m gonna do this’ and I felt like I was about to cry.”
Bellew would go on to face and beat Haye for a second time before moving back down to cruiserweight only to be knocked out by Oleksandr Usyk. He retired then and there. Joshua is still active, and was also beaten by Usyk recently to lose his unified titles.