Ward wins warm up to Kessler
Super middleweight contender Andre Ward scored a convincing knockout to keep his place in line and move the chains forward for Goossen-Tutor Promotions. Ward was on target like a pair of laser-guided smart bombs.
It was Ward who entered the fight against Shelby Pudwill (22-4-1) knowing his next opponent would be Mikkel Kessler who won earlier in the day in his native Denmark. The Oakland fighter didn't skip a beat in pounding out three rounds of snapping combinations that seemed to find every crease in Pudwill's defense.
"It's hard to knock out somebody who is fighting defensively," said Ward, whose victory now nails down a showdown with Kessler. "I came in and did what I had to do."
Though it was declared a tune up by most experts, even tune ups can result in disaster as another of Goossen-Tutor Promotion fighters Paul Williams discovered in the same arena a couple of years ago against Carlos Quintana.
"I hate tune ups," said Dan Goossen, the president of Goossen-Tutor, adding that cuts and other injuries can fell a fight card as easily as a knockout. "I'm glad this is over".
It was in the third round when Pudwill decided to stand his ground and punch and it was also the third round that saw Ward find the mark with even more combinations than before. A left uppercut snapped Pudwill's head back and dropped the North Dakota fighter for a knockdown.
"He doesn't hit that hard but he cut my eye," said Pudwill, who had been knocked out in one round by John Duddy.
"I don't even know what I did. That's when I'm at my best. One of those wild movements I just stepped to the side," said Ward about the punch that floored Pudwill and led an eventual stoppage after some lobbying by Ward who said that he was watching an old Muhammad Ali fight film and saw the legend pull that same tactic. "I'm a fighter I know when a guy gets weak. It's over with. The referee was watching very close. He stopped it when he was supposed to."
Referee Pat Russell stopped the fight at 2:16 of the third round.