Andre Ward is now 41 years old, he’s been retired for eight years and a first-ballot boxing Hall of Famer since 2022, but he’s now ready to come back.
Ward was consensus one of the finest fighters on the planet P4P as he claimed world titles at super-middleweight and light-heavyweight en route to a perfect 32-0 professional record. But then in 2017 Ward announced that his body could no longer put up with the demands of fighting at elite level, and that therefore he no longer had the desire to continue.
DAZN: Sign up to watch Itauma vs Whyte live!
Eight years on though it appears there is just a chance that he may yet fight again, throwing up the intriguing possibility of a US vs UK megafight. The man in Ward’s sights is none other than former two-time world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
AJ of course is preparing to return to action following elbow surgery, with the likeliest opponents being either British rival Tyson Fury or Youtuber turned boxer Jake Paul. Either fight would make huge dollars at the box office.
Ward wants ‘payday’ says AJ
If you believe AJ (check out his response to Ward’s callout below), Ward has heard about the potential financial rewards for a Joshua ‘payday’, and is eager to get a piece of that massive pie.
Ward said: “One name that I brought up before, that when you say that name, I can see myself fighting him. Present day, today. If the business was right and you know everything was right on that front, me and Anthony Joshua, that’s a fight that I would take at Wembley Stadium.
“It’s a dangerous fight for my legacy, it’s a dangerous fight across the board, and, um. But that’s a fight that would, that would get me in the gym and get me, in the mindset that I need to be in to go to war.”
Joshua vs Ward would be a terrific matchup, at least hypothetically, but it’s one more for the purists rather than the crossover crowd. Ward was not a huge PPV attraction eight years ago, so why would he be on after almost a decade of inactivity.
From AJ’s perspective, assuming Ward was competitive after all that inactivity, it would give him a similar type challenge to the one he faced against Oleksandr Usyk in 2021 and 2022. Taking on a smaller, faster, more skilful man at heavyweight. We remember how that worked out.
READ MORE
- Boxing hit by double tragedy as two fighters die after the same show
- Heavyweight rankings – the world’s top 10 right now
- Moses Itauma given ‘disaster’ warning as Turki Alalshikh pitches superfight
- Ben Davison makes one ‘significant’ point about the Moses Itauma hype
- Heavyweight rankings – the definitive list with every sanctioning body
- P4P rankings – the top 10 fighters in boxing in August 2025
