if Ward is going to stay at 168, he simply is going to have to fight all comers and not worry about ridiculous paydays. he will have to reign like Hagler did until fighters are large enough to swim in his pond.
lemme give an observation on Mayweather. he has received his share of criticism and praise, he deserves both. his situation cannot be compared to Ward's....not saying its better or worse but they were different.
FMJ went through weight classes and purposefully fought and didnt fight who he wanted...selectively. he couldve fought Casa or Popo, he chose not to and they had to fight each other, eventually Casa had to fight Popo, Diego, and JLC. Diego had to fight all of them as well. They all had to fight each other. FMJ never cleaned out a division. Here is what he did that was so clever.
Tyson was the last big self made American draw. The mystique, the menacing persona, the destructive power, etc....made him huge. The next two were DLH and FMJ. They followed the blueprint of the last huge American boxing draw....SRL.
That blueprint was to fight only fights that added marketability....be it a big name or the collection of titles. All 3 have something in common. They could avoid fighters who presented equal or greater risk than the reward provided. They could always justify not fighting a particular opponent without laying a glove on them and sometimes even used revisionist history to do so.
If you ask FMJ prior to Casa fighting Popo, why not fight Casa, he would say, who has he fought? Why should I fight him? After the Casa/Popo fight...."he just lost to Popo, there is no reason for me to fight him"
FMJ felt he never needed to beat everyone in a division....only one or maybe two. He saw himself as a prize and everyone should round robin and determine who would be his best challenge. If he beat Diego and JLC, there was never a reason to fight anyone else at 130 or 135 in his eyes.
I dont hold his short stint at 140 against him so much but he had plenty of opposition there. He wanted to get to WW. Even though he let the richest fight pass him by, he is not all that upset about it...because the debate between who the best P4P fighter was between him and Pac was settled without him even throwing a punch. If JMM KOed Pac, and I beat JMM, what makes you think Pac could beat me?
SRL did the same thing throughout his career. Why do you think he made over $100 million in purses in just 40 fights before the 90's? Never forget when Donald Curry was clamoring for a fight with SRL. SRL was calling the fight between Curry-McCallum. The look on SRL's face when McCallum KOed Curry.....
Its not about who can beat you but the challenge. Some fighters are up for it, some are simply in it for the business aspect. As much as I disliked DLH in his early career, I respected him later in his career because there was a point where he had to fight everyone in his vicinity.
Its not all FMJ's fault because DLH and SRL had much better fighters around them in their era's. Still, they all played the same game.
Again, to tie Ward back into this. If there are no big money fights that make sense, then he should focus on fighting all comers. He has to be the Hagler of his generation, or at least the Hopkins. FMJ is already the SRL.
excellent post breh 
and if floyd is truly following in the same trajectory as sugar ray did..his bs will catch up to him like it did when terrible terry and camacho ended up beating the shyt out sugar ray at the end of his career
or msg? if its not and its in CT im there...and macklin gets KTFO
) for that matter. His team is smarter than that.
