When Joe Ward answers his phone he’s in surprisingly good form, all things considered. Just the night before, he got word that the biggest fight of his professional career had been cancelled. Being an optimist is probably no harm for a professional boxer, a sport in which there’s no guarantees of progression, or indeed, paycheques.
But this seems more like he’s just used to it by now, and he’s trying to focus on what’s in his control. He’s been featured on bills all around the world that have fallen through. Shows in New York, Montreal, Boston, Dublin and now Galway have all collapsed and left the Westmeath man in the lurch.
“We got tickets in our hands, and we always get a lot of family, friends and supporters who buy them, and they pre-booked hotels in Galway. So it’s a big let-down”, he explains. “It’s never easy when a show gets called, because there’s the time, effort, and cost of these training camps. It can be very annoying sometimes.”
In a sport where Ireland have often overachieved, “Mighty” Joe Ward was one of Ireland’s truly great amateurs, winning three world championship medals. Amateur boxing has been blighted by corruption, but to its credit, it tends to offer fairly linear pathways to success. Professional boxing, on the other hand, is a big game of snakes and ladders, with very few fighters having a simple route to the summit.
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On top of that, it would be fair to say that Ward has been particularly unlucky when he has rolled the dice. In 2019 he went pro, saying that he felt he needed to “give it a lash” before it was too late, but his debut ended up being a bizarre and disastrous affair, with the Irishman blowing his knee out. His opponent was awarded a stoppage win, but Ward was more worried about the long-term future.
“You go pro and you get an opportunity to fight in Madison Square Garden on your debut. You want everything to go right for you, you want to be that person that really stands out. I don’t know; that’s boxing. It was just the freakiest thing. At that time it was just like ‘my god, is this the end of the road before it really starts? Is this what it was all leading up to?’”
After recovering ahead of schedule, Ward was supposed to return in March of 2020, but you can guess how that turned out. The injury, along with the lockdowns caused by Covid, meant that Ward spent the first 14 months of his pro career with a record of zero wins and one loss. He admits that things weren’t going to plan at that stage.
“That was definitely another blow, sitting out of boxing with Covid. Everything was really, really slow, time passes and everyday was a battle before it had started. I was nearly two or three years behind, all down to a freak injury and Covid; both out of my control. It’s been a very tough few years since I started my pro career.”
A losing record couldn’t have sat well with Ward after his amateur days. After all, Ward has never lost a fight on Irish soil. That streak is particularly impressive considering he fought 2008 Olympic medallist Kenneth Egan in multiple national finals. He was only 17 in the first of those fights in 2010 – a time when amateur boxing brought a major buzz in Dublin.
“Coming up against the likes of Kenneth Egan, a lot of people didn’t really give me much of a chance because I was 17. I don’t believe that the National Stadium was ever like that before, and it will take a long time before it’s like that again. It was absolutely rocking. There wasn’t a seat to sit down on, and looking back at it now they were amazing nights for Irish boxing.”
There’s been thousands of gruelling hours of training, but Ward’s natural talent was clear from the minute he first stepped into his local gym in Moate, Westmeath. That was when he was only six years old; too young to join at the time, he says. Eventually though, his amateur coach Seamus Dorrington got sick of the kid haunting the front door to peek into the gym, and let him lace up some gloves.
“I was always turning up at the door and looking in. Eventually Seamus came up to me and said, ‘come in and don’t be messing around and hit the bag’. He wasn’t paying much attention to me, then he looked over and took a bit of notice, and he said to my uncle ‘that young lad is gonna be very special, just look at his footwork. Will you bring him back on Wednesday?’”
It’s a fitting origin story for Ward, given what he went on to accomplish, but it’s the ending that’s more of a concern now. Six years into his pro career, with 12 victories behind him, Ward still hasn’t been able to climb the rankings. His opponent for the fight in Galway seemed to be the perfect step up: former British and European champion, Lerrone Richards. That was until Richards pulled out and the bill was relocated to Hull, where no opponent could be found for Ward.
“It’s just about getting that one breakthrough fight and I felt like that was going to happen against Lerrone Richards. The fighters who are higher ranked than me know what I have achieved. I believe now that at the age of 31 that I’m better than I ever was, so they won’t give me the opportunity unless I’m backed by the big guys.”
There’s a very limited number of “big guys” out there, but Ward will need one of the major promoters on board, otherwise his ability inside the squared circle could go to waste. Now 31, there’s only a certain amount of time left for him to reach the top of the mountain, and right now, the important question is not really whether he can do it. It’s whether he’ll get the chance to.
