In the past week, Andre Ward’s promoter Dan Goossen announced that the WBA Super Middleweight Champion is now scheduled to fight Arthur Abraham on May 14 at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California. The bout is one of the two semifinals in Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic. The other semifinal bout will feature Carl Froch and Glen Johnson and is tentatively scheduled for May 21, although there are currently issues with a location.
Although the Super Six World Boxing Classic has hit several potholes along the way, Andre Ward has used the tournament as a coming out party. He opened the Classic with a stunning upset of Mikkel Kessler, and followed that up with a shutout decision of Allan Green. His subsequent fight against Sakio Bika was not a Super Six fight, but it gave him a chance to show he could dig deep against a similar style of boxer. Through those three fights he’s climbed to the top of The Ring Magazine Super Middleweight rankings.
On the other side of things, Arthur Abraham is in a slide that has dropped him to tenth in the Super Middleweight rankings. In his first Super Six fight he gained a vicious knock out of Jermain Taylor and seemed locked in as one of the early favorites. However, in his subsequent fight he was well on his way to losing a decision to Andre Dirrell before getting disqualified in the 11th round for a late hit on Dirrell. He followed that up with a one-sided decision loss to Carl Froch. He won a February tune-up fight, but his headliner career is on the ropes heading into this semifinal match.