Andre Ward Fought Injured Through Much of His Career!

You had an amazing career, but one of the things that I think maybe people aren't as aware of, is what makes your career even more incredible, is that you fought for a long time with a bad shoulder. Like if you go back and watch the Karl Froch fight, I watched that, getting ready for this, I watched it again, you boxed the shit out of him with mostly your left hand. Yeah. It was crazy. Yeah. I was 12 years old, toward my sub scapularis, which is responsible for 50% of the strength in a rotator. Didn't really know it at the time. We were told, hey, he's too young, he shouldn't have surgery, just rehab it. Wrong advice. Found that out 10 years later. But we just rehabbed it with bands and strengthening exercises, but we never had surgery. So that was always kind of my Achilles heel, man. It's been plenty of fights where I just fought with one handed, because it didn't feel strong, it didn't feel safe. I feel like anytime I would throw it, it could pop out of the socket. That's how it felt. So it had popped out before? It had not, but it felt like it could. Got it fixed right around 2013, and it wasn't 100, but it was better. And I was able to finish out the rest of my career. So it's still not 100 now. It's not 100, but I'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it, bro. I probably gained about 30, 40% with that surgery. They grabbed it because the subscapularis was loose. It wasn't attached, but it wasn't atrophied. It was still a fat, thriving muscle. It just wasn't attached. My doctor was like, whoa, has this ever popped out of the socket? Dr. Michael Dillingham in San Francisco, I was like, nah, he was like, how? Your shoulder capsule was shot. The subscap is hanging. He said, but the good news is it's still a thriving muscle. Let's get it attached. Boom, he attached it like a four hour surgery, something like that. One of those surgeries that you're not guaranteed to come out of the same. And you had to wait for a month or so to see if the surgery took, like if everything would mend and kind of get stronger. It took, man, and like I said, I finished out the rest of my career strong. Wow. So how long was the rehab? Probably about eight months. So you went from, it was about 2012 to 2015 where you didn't fight very often. Was that because? Very frequently, yeah. Was that because of the shoulder? Combination of a lawsuit and the injury. Yeah, it's kind of like back to back blows. So for eight months, you're rehabbing it and just still, when did you know that for sure you're going to be able to come back? You kind of turn a corner and rehab, you know, three month mark, four month mark, you kind of realize it, dude, like I'm good. Like I'm not where I need to be, but like I'm headed there. So probably about that time, about halfway through, you realize that you're going to be OK. It's just going to take some time to fully get the strength back. But even my next fight against Edwin Rodriguez, like I still didn't throw it. And I didn't realize I didn't throw it until I watched the tape. I watched the tape. I was like, hey, you still like a one handed affair. And then after that thing about injuries is weird. Like that 12 month period for me has always been like just like that sweet spot. So I got to that 12 month period with the shoulder and all of a sudden my overhand right came back and thrown over here right in 10 years. You know, my the power in my right upper cut came back. I'm like, dude, this is getting better. So after that, then you started to see that thing flying and started whistling. And ironically enough, my last fight, that was the punch that started all the trouble for Sergey Kovalev. Well, it's interesting because you were so successful with one hand, you know, it makes you wonder like how God damn good would you have been if you had two hands or was it your left hand was so educated? Yeah, it had to be. It had to be. But one of the things you were so good at, man, was I don't have to tell you, you know, this was using your jab to shut down Southball fighters, shut down their jab and counter, you know, and you just had that. You had like extra juice with your left hand because you used it so much. I had to. Like when you have one hand or one arm that functions really well, like you learn to make that thing great. Like, you know, you overcompensate and that's what that left hand was overcompensation because I didn't have the right hand to fall back on, you know, but the whole Southball thing, shout out to my boy Nick and they Diaz, like in all the work we've done in camp, like those guys got me ready for a lot of myself part opponents like, you know, midway through and toward the end of my career. So a lot of work with those guys and specifically Nate at a certain point, I stopped working with Nick because he was doing other things. But Nate man and the volume and having to like deal with the awkwardness and the height and the reach and like that got me ready for Chad Dawson.