Andre Ward successfully defended his WBA super middleweight title with a unanimous twelve round decision victory over the once reigning “King” Arthur Abraham at The Home Depot Center in Carson, CA. Ward will now move onto the final of Showtime’s Super Six Tournament where he will defend his title against the winner of the June fourth Super Middleweight semi-final bout between Carl Froch and Glen Johnson.
All three judges ringside had it in the champions favor scoring the bout 120-108, 118-110, 118-111.
A boisterous crowd cheered both for the Californian Ward and Abraham, backed by hundreds of loud Armenian fans from Southern California . “Arthur Abraham was strong and very determined,” Ward said. “He had passionate fans and he didn’t want to lose in front of them. I’m going to stay humble and keep working hard. I want to be champion for a long time and take the least amount of punishment possible.”
Abraham (32-2, 26 KOs), of Berlin, Germany, by way of Armenia, lost for the third straight time but vowed after the fight that he would remain in the talent-rich super middleweight division.
“I started well and thought I was doing OK for the first three rounds,” said Abraham, the former International Boxing Federation (IBF) middleweight world champion. “He never hurt me and I was blocking all his punches. But then I cramped up when I was trying for the knockout and I couldn’t do it.
“I gave it my all and fought really hard and will stay at super middleweight.”
Ward seemed to get stronger and stronger as the fight went on while Abraham looked visibly tired towards the end of the fight, absorbing Ward’s hard body shots and a variety of assorted jabs and uppercuts.
“My trainer says that I’m the type of fighter to make adjustments and that’s what I did,” said Ward, who threw 289 jabs during the fight, landing 178 of his 444 total punches. “I wish the refs would have let me fight on the inside – that’s what we trained for. But we made adjustments and got the victory. After a hard hit, I would go back to my corner and I would do two things: I would listen to my corner and talk to myself and I would say, ‘Bite down and fight back.’ “
Ward will be intently watching on June 4 in Atlantic City , N.J. “I’ll fight Johnson or Froch, but I think the public wants to see Froch-Ward,” he said.
In a non-televised undercard fight, heavyweight world contender and popular Southern California slugger Chris Arreola turned in an impressive performance against Nagy Aguilera, stopping him in the third round.
