Killing the Image by Andre Ward

Author:Andre Ward
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper Horizon
Published: 2023-09-13T00:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

PRIZEFIGHTING

We settled on a West Coast promoter named Dan Goossen who had promoted fighters like Mike Tyson, James Toney, and Bernard Hopkins. We felt a West Coast promoter was good for me because I wanted to be heavily promoted in the Bay Area and the West Coast in general. We also brought in the legendary Roy Jones Jr. as my co-promoter. Roy was my favorite fighter and he had his own promotional company, Square Ring. We strategically put Roy and the CEO of his company, Brad Jacobs, in place as another set of eyes and ears to ensure the numbers and terms that were being presented to us were real.

My first professional fight was a week before Christmas—December 18, 2004. It was televised on HBO, which was a big deal. Without a gold medal, a young fighter typically has to fight for years before having a fight shown on HBO. That night I fought on the undercard of the Antonio Tarver–Glen Johnson light heavyweight championship fight. Chris Molina was my opponent, a boxer out of Texas who was very unknown. Virg wanted us to pick fighters who would provide enough of a test so I could develop as a young pro, but he didn’t want me to be rushed along the way.

The night of the fight I was nervous but also excited. This was the first step in a pro career, and there was a lot of pressure from the boxing world. There was no headgear; I wore no tank top. This was different. I felt bare, naked. The first time I had pulled on a professional pair of gloves, I was shocked by how minimal the padding was. I could literally see and feel my knuckles through the glove. Man, we’re fighting in these? They were so thin that if you blocked a hard punch with the gloves, you could still feel the impact of the punch through the gloves. It wasn’t like that with the big, bulky amateur gloves. The reality of it all hit me—this was a different game.

As I made my first walk to the ring, I noticed right away that the crowd was different than what I was used to. They wanted blood. But my nerves started to dissipate after I landed the first few punches. The crowd oohed and aahed as I began to overwhelm Molina with speed and power. I started to realize that even though the crowd was bigger and that there was more pressure on me, at the end of the day, this was still just boxing. I turned up the heat on Molina until I scored a technical knockout (TKO) in the second round. I was so relieved that I got my first fight out of the way without any mishaps.

My purse for that first fight was made public: $250,000. The very next day, I had a family member ask me for money. I let them know I couldn’t do it. It was a quick introduction to my new life.

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