OAKLAND, Calif. ? Allan Green has long resented being an outsider in boxing, but he didn?t much like it on the inside Saturday in the biggest opportunity of the Tulsa super-middleweight?s career.
Green (29-2) was thoroughly outpointed by WBA super-middleweight champion Andre Ward in their Super Six tournament bout, losing 120-108 on all three scorecards.
Ward surprised many observers, apparently including Green, by dictating a brutal inside fight and mauling Green with uppercuts, pot shots and the occasional elbow.
?I hit a hard wall in training camp,? Green said. ?By the time I got in the ring, I felt dead.
?Andre Ward showed me a lot of things.?
Green said he expected inside fight but was too weak to do anything about it.
?That wasn?t the game plan,? Ward said. ?We didn?t plan to go inside as much as we did,?.
The outcome left Green in sixth place in the six-man Super Six field.
Green, a latecomer to the Super Six as the replacement for knockout victim Jermain Taylor, had not fought anyone of Super Six caliber. A 2007 middleweight loss to Edison Miranda, whom Ward subsequently defeated, and digestive system problems that required surgery, hampered Green?s progress so that most attention focused on his career was emanating from Tulsa and it seemed he might never get a chance to prove himself an elite fighter.
Green pressed the action in a tentative first round and probably won it. But Ward opened up in the second, landing five or six power shots, and took control of the fight.
Ward took the fight inside in the third round, and Green didn?t seem prepared for it. Much of the round was fought near Ward?s corner, with Green against the ropes and getting manhandled and peppered with short power shots and uppercuts. Ward kept the fight inside in the fourth. When he tried to move outside to land combinations, Green landed a big left hook, and Ward came back inside.
But clearly Green was not in control and after five had not carried the fight since the first round.
With a minute gone in the sixth round, ward started uncorking power shots, and with Green cornered, referee Raul Caiz Sr. seemed to be considering stopping the bout. It was arguably a 10-8 round. The only question thereafter was whether Green could last the 12-round distance.
Despite the defeat, Green is not dead in the water in the Super Six. If he wins his Group Stage 3 match against Mikkel Kessler, probably next winter, he might be able to advance among the top four to the tournament semifinals. If he can knock out Kessler, he would be sure top advance. Ward has four points in the tournament, Arthur Abraham has three, and Kessler, Andre Dirrell and Carl Froch are tied for third with two each.
