Ward slowly but surely builds a boxing career

In the current world of big-time boxing, Andre Ward doesn’t even make the radar screen.

He is an undercard guy, somebody who fights so early that he can shower and leave before the main-event boxers arrive in their limos.

Saturday night at the Home Depot Center, on a card that is headlined by the Antonio Margarito-Paul Williams welterweight match, Ward will be fighting mostly for the entertainment of the ushers.

Or, perhaps, for those knowledgeable enough about boxing to know that Ward may be the future, to know an early arrival may be worthwhile.

If Ward’s name is familiar, it is because he won a gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.

It used to be that U.S. boxers dominated, that U.S. fight fans could expect a steady stream of Olympic heroes turned pro box-office gold mines. That was the way it was with Muhammad Ali, Joe Frazier, George Foreman, Sugar Ray Leonard and Oscar De La Hoya.

But somewhere along the way, in an Olympic sport that has always reeked of shady officials overseeing shady outcomes and politics counting more than punches -- expect a sudden Chinese boxing gold rush in Beijing next summer -- USA Boxing lost its way.

David Reid won the gold for the U.S. in Atlanta in 1996, then the U.S. was blanked in Sydney in 2000 in a tournament that featured controversial losses in the finals by two U.S. boxers and the suspension of a Russian referee as the result of one of those losses.

So when Ward won in 2004, at 179 pounds, avoiding a two-Olympiad shutout for the U.S., it was no small feat. He had beaten two world champions along the way, had stopped a good Belarusian named Magomed Aripgadjiev in the final, 20-13, and had done so at a time when anti-U.S. sentiment was so strong that he was booed every time he stepped in the ring.

By the time he fought in the final, he knew all his teammates had been bounced from gold-medal chances and he knew what that meant.

“I was the last guy standing for my country,” he says.

That was three years and 12 professional fights ago. Now, quite possibly, he might be the next guy standing tall for his sport. He has gone slowly, guided by godfather and trainer Virgil Hunter, and with the approval of his promoting partners, Dan Goossen and Roy Jones Jr., Saturday night’s 168-pound bout against Francisco Diaz (16-1) will be an eight-rounder. Ward and Hunter expect there will be another eight-rounder in the fall before they embark on 10-round fights and really start chasing a title.

Maybe next spring, all things still going well, it will be time for Ward’s name to be in the bright lights reserved for main-event fighters. Maybe he will even arrive in a limo.

But for now, in a sport that pounds itself on the chest to make sure we pay attention and gives new meaning to the word braggadocio, Ward and Hunter are quietly taking their time.

“Right now, it is fine for Andre not to be a star, but maybe to beat some stars,” Hunter says. “You move too fast, you stumble and fall.”

He cited the pro careers of former Olympians Reid and Fernando Vargas as examples.

Ward is 23 and hasn’t lost a fight since 1998, an amateur bout in which, Hunter says, he was penalized for fighting too much of a pro style. Besides his 12-0 pro record, Hunter lists his amateur mark as 105-5. In one of Ward’s pro fights, he was knocked down by Darnell Boone.

“I never saw the punch,” Ward says.

Hunter adds, “And even with the knockdown, he won the round on the judges’ scorecards.”

Ward, who defies boxing tradition by using nouns and verbs that actually agree, says he uses the inspiration of God and his deceased father. Frank Ward died of a heart attack in 2002 at age 46. He had a 15-0 record as a Northern California pro fighter and had taken his son to a gym at age 9 to teach him to defend himself. There, they met Hunter.

When his father died, Ward admits to struggling with his Christianity, a faith that takes him, his wife and two sons to church as often as three times a week in his hometown, the Oakland suburb of Dublin.

“It was hard for a 17-year-old,” Ward says. “I didn’t go so far as to question God as to why, but I had a period of time where I was unable to pray. For a while there in 2003, ‘04, it got real personal.”

His religious standards today are such that, were it up to him rather than the promoters, those scantily clad females who parade in the ring between rounds wouldn’t be parading during his fights. Once, one of them asked him to pose with her for a picture and Ward declined.

“If she put a few more clothes on, it would have been OK,” he says.

Lest it appear that Ward has no lust in his heart, think again.

“I’ve been looking at some of the old fights on TV recently,” he says, “and those championship belts are starting to look awfully good.”

Later, when another Goossen fighter, heavyweight Cristobal Arreola, snapped off powerful punches into the gloved hands of his trainer during a workout, Ward stood nearby, watching and lusting at the thought of someday performing in the glamour weight division of boxing.

“How about a couple of years,” he says, “and 6-foot-2 and 200 pounds?”

That’s two inches and 32 pounds of growth, but at least it probably would get him into the ring after the sun goes down.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Fight facts

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Saturday’s fight card begins at 5:30 p.m.:

* Where: The 8,000-seat tennis stadium at the Home Depot Center in Carson.

MAIN EVENT

* WBO welterweight title fight:

Antonio Margarito (34-4, 1 NC, 24 KOs) vs. Paul Williams (32-0, 24 KOs).

FEATURED UNDERCARD

* Super-middleweight: Andre Ward

(12-0, seven KOs) vs. Francisco Diaz

(16-1-0, eight KOs).

* Heavyweight: Cristobal Arreola

(20-0, 18 KOs) vs. Derek Berry

(12-8-1, five KOs).

* Tickets: Available starting at $25 with VIP floor seats priced at $300. Available by calling Ticketmaster outlets and online at www.ticketmaster.com, as well as the Home Depot Center box office.