The last and only time any of us has seen Mikkel Kessler lose a prizefight was when Joe Calzaghe used his confounding array of incongruous gifts to turn what was a competitive fight early into something resembling a rout down the stretch.

Calzaghe had a knack for doing that to seemingly better or more gifted fighters (see Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones), with conditioning, activity, smarts and a bottomless well of stubborn self-belief.

Those attributes would likely have gone for naught against Kessler had Calzaghe not also been possessed of the very weapon Andre Ward will carry into the ring against Kessler next week in the second round of the Super Six tourney: uncommon speed.

Yes, Calzaghe brushed off Kessler’s best right hands. And yes, he imposed his will (an over-used but entirely accurate phrase in this case) on Kessler, and yes, he outsmarted him.

But without the hand and foot speed he needed to execute, Calzaghe likely would have fallen victim to Kessler’s own formidable hand speed and combination punching, as have so many other slower, more stationary fighters.

None of this is lost on Ward, who was light years faster than Edison Miranda in Ward’s only fight against a world class opponent. But, then, we’ve seen entire insect species go extinct in the time it can take for Miranda to unload one those booming right hands.

Ward said during a recent press conference that his speed isn’t the only thing about which Kessler will have to worry.

“I’m planning on bringing the total package,” he said. “I don’t know how you perceive me as a fighter but I plan to bring a little bit of everything on November 21st. Not just speed, not just foot work. The total package.”

One could be forgiven for wondering what else he is referring to, as he is not a very big puncher, is not a defensive specialist in the vein of, say, Pernell Whitaker, and is not in the same time zone as Kessler is when it comes to experience against upper-echelon fighters.

When presented with the last of these troubling realities, Ward relies on history to prove that on occasion, experience has proved largely irrelevant.

“I’ve been fighting for a long, long time. This isn’t my first big fight. This isn’t my first big stage. I’ve been here before in terms of the pressure. It’s just my time to shine,” he said.

“If you look at other great fighters when you have the skill and the hunger, records don’t mean anything. If you look at Floyd Mayweather Jr. when he fought Genaro Hernandez he wasn’t supposed to win that fight. Muhammad Ali when he beat Sonny Liston he wasn’t supposed to win that fight. Sugar Ray Leonard and Wilfredo Benitez, Leonard really wasn’t supposed to win that fight. So that’s how I look at it. A guy who has more fights than you is not going to stop you from fulfilling your goal.”

Ward is right in this. A prospect remains a prospect until the moment he wins his big fight. But it’s more often the case that greater experience is invaluable on the biggest stages, as Chris Arreola discovered to his horror not long ago.

A betting man would conclude that if Ward is to win, he must do it on the back of his impressive speed, to make Kessler feel like he is in with Calzaghe again and is too slow, too unimaginative to unravel the stifling mysteries of great quickness.

For what it’s worth, Kessler says the loss to Calzaghe made him better.

“I fought my heart out. I learned a lot from the experience. It was my first loss and I thought, ‘Oh, no. Everything’s over now.’ But it has only made me stronger,” he said.

Fighters always say that and sometimes it’s true. It’s also true that Kessler looked stiff and a bit flat last time out stopping the limited Gusmyr Perdomo in four rounds. And Perdomo isn’t nearly as fast as is Ward.

Kessler seems unconcerned, even with the notion of fighting in Ward‘s hometown of Oakland, California.

“Every fight I fight like it’s my last fight. That’s the way I see it and why I get better and better for each fight. I’m very excited to fight Ward in his hometown. I think it’s going to be a great fight.”

I think it will be too, right up until the time comes late in the fight when Kessler’s class takes over and Ward, a good fighter but not ready yet for one as accomplished as Kessler, finds that sometimes even great speed isn’t enough.


Some random observations from last week:

If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re watching something pretty special in Manny Pacquiao. The guy is a born predator in the ring and not even Miguel Cotto, as good as he is, could stay competitive with him past about the fifth round. Pacquiao keeps this up he might turn the Philippines into a world power…

Floyd Mayweather will demand ownership rights to Australia and maybe Denmark in return for fighting Pacquiao, but guess what? He beats him…

That wasn’t Alfonso Gomez and Jesus Soto Karass opening the pay-per-view show, it was Skipper Kelp and Zeljko Mavrovic…

Kudos to Yuri Foreman for a very solid win over Daniel Santos on the Pacquiao-Cotto undercard. Call him dull if you want, but Foreman’s gotten to where he is not because of an abundance of physical talent, but because he’s worked hard at his craft and knows how to fight. Good for him…

Let me get this straight: Kelly Pavlik isn’t well enough to fight Paul Williams on December 5, but he’s well enough to fight Miguel Espino two weeks later? Calzaghe should sue for copyright infringement. He invented that move…

Note to Mike Tyson’s physician: time to up the dosage…

Thank goodness the WBO decided to sanction Pacquiao-Cotto for its “super” championship. Otherwise, how would anyone have known to watch it?…

My thanks to reader Sebastian Montesi, who wrote to say that Jorge Castro stopped Imamu Mayfield and not the other way around, as I erroneously wrote in last week’s column. You mean people pay attention to this stuff?…

Tomasz Adamek just beat Andrew Golota like 20 minutes ago and already has a fight lined up for February. Take note, slackers…

How do you know Pacquiao-Cotto was big? The hoity-toity New York Times deigned to run a feature on Cotto’s trainer Joe Santiago on the front page of Saturday’s on-line edition, and then another front page story on the result the day after. Must have been a slow news day.


Bill Dettloff can be reached at dettloff@ptd.net