{"id":145346,"date":"2025-09-15T16:29:08","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/145346\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T16:29:08","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T16:29:08","slug":"andre-ward-says-there-is-no-doubt-which-of-his-opponents-hit-him-hardest-in-32-fight-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/145346\/","title":{"rendered":"Andre Ward Says There Is ‘No Doubt’ Which Of His Opponents Hit Him Hardest In 32 Fight Career"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former pound-for-pound star Andre Ward<\/a> has revealed the hardest punching opponent that he ever shared the ring with.<\/p>\n

Ward had an exceptional professional career where he captured world titles at both super-middleweight and light-heavyweight.<\/a><\/p>\n

He reigned as the unified world champion at 168lbs between 2009 and 2015, defeating the likes of Carl Froch<\/a>, Chad Dawson, Mikkel Kessler and Arthur Abraham before making the move up to light-heavyweight.<\/p>\n

Ward defeated Russian star Sergey Kovalev in November of 2016 to capture the unified WBA, WBO and IBF light-heavyweight titles to become a two-weight world champion, repeating this feat in their rematch just seven months later to cement his place in boxing folklore.<\/p>\n

He announced his retirement from the sport just a short while after his second victory over Kovalev, walking away from the sport with an unblemished record of 32-0 to his name.<\/p>\n

Having taken on a number of big hitters in his career, Ward revealed in an interview with Boxing News<\/a> that two-time world title challenger Edison Miranda as the hardest puncher that he ever faced in a surprising admission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe hardest puncher was definitely Edison Miranda \u2013 no doubt about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ward faced Miranda during the earlier stages of his professional career, defeating the durable Colombian via unanimous decision at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California.<\/p>\n

Miranda also shared the ring with Lucian Bute, Arthur Abraham and Tony Bellew in his career, which ended with a record of 37 wins and 13 defeats, with 32 of his victories coming by knockout<\/p>\n

As for Ward, although he has been out of the ring for over eight years, rumours have began to circulate about a potential return, after it was revealed that the 41-year-old had expressed an interest in a shock clash against two-time unified world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former pound-for-pound star Andre Ward has revealed the hardest punching opponent that he ever shared the ring with.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145347,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[571],"tags":[64,63,802,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-145346","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}