JRE MMA Show #78 with Andre Ward

Joe Rogan (0:01)

Two, one, boom.

Andre Ward, ladies and gentlemen. How are you, brother?

Andre Ward (0:05)

I'm good, man, how you doing?

Joe Rogan (0:06)

Thank you very much for doing this, man. I'm a big fan, so I was very excited to do this.

Andre Ward (0:09)

Appreciate you having me.

Joe Rogan (0:10)

You did it in terms of like, if you're a young fighter and you got aspirations, what do you wanna do? You wanna be an Olympic gold medalist, you wanna win multiple world titles, two division world champion, and you retired undefeated.

You're like a unicorn, man. You're a rare dude, because you retired at 35, right?

Andre Ward (0:31)

33

Joe Rogan (0:31)

33, that's crazy. Like you're in the peak of your athletic abilities, and you go, you know what?

You did enough.

Andre Ward (0:39)

I'm out.

I mean, it sounds all neat and buttoned up, but it wasn't that easy. Like I didn't know how things were gonna go throughout the course of my career, but for whatever reason, like always even as a young kid, I'm talking 10 years old, like I had this thought, like, you know, I don't wanna end up like a lot of fighters end up. Like they seem to go high, really high, and then all of a sudden they come crashing down. Like they start well, but they don't end well.

That's what drew me to Roy Jones Jr. Country boy had swag, and he'd always talk about himself in the third person. He'd be like, man, you know, Roy Jones, I don't love the sport like that, man. I'm gonna get in and get out. I'm just special at it, and I'm gonna be fishing on my farm one day in Pensacola, Florida. And I was like, man, this dude is different. Fighters don't talk like that. So he was the first one that gave me the thought of getting in and getting out.

And then again, I just studied it throughout the course of my career. Even other athletes and entertainers, like I was enamored by it. So that was always a goal, just as much as I wanted to win a gold medal, world championship. I wanted to leave on top when people were asking, why are you leaving?

Joe Rogan (1:46)

Yeah, it's so difficult to make that decision, though. Roy Jones Jr. didn't even make that decision.

He said he was going to do it, and then, I mean, he had some rough knockouts.

Andre Ward (1:58)

It was late in his career.

Joe Rogan (2:00)

Hard to watch. Some of them that people even didn't even see.

Andre Ward (2:03)

Yeah, yeah. Heartbreaking.

Joe Rogan (2:05)

Yeah.

Andre Ward (2:05)

Especially if you followed him and supported him like I have.

Joe Rogan (2:08)

Especially if you know his decision was based on Jerro McClellan. A lot of it was.

Andre Ward (2:11)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan (2:12)

When Jerro McClellan, for people who don't know, was a murderer man. I mean, he was a savage light heavyweight, but he caught, he was cutting a lot of weight, and he wound up having a serious brain injury in that epic fight with Nigel Ben, which is an amazing, amazing fight. Ben got off the deck. It looked like the fight was over, because Jerro McClellan would just murk people, man.

Andre Ward (2:35)

Absolutely.

Joe Rogan (2:36)

Like a prototypical cronk destroyer.

Big right hand. Woo, tall, strong as fuck, super aggressive, knockout striker. And for whatever reason, Roy decided, you know what, let's just keep doing it, fuck it.

Andre Ward (2:52)

It's a lot of different reasons why people do that, man. I just didn't want to be one of them, simply put.

But it is, like the retirement is coming up on two years, September 21st. It's harder than I thought it was going to be.

One of the most hardest things I've ever had to do, but one of the most rewarding. And the way I reconcile it in my brain is that, okay, at some point I'm going to have to do this. At some point I'm going to have to face the emotions and the pull to come back and trying to figure out if your body can still do it. And just all the different things you go through, whether I'm in my prime or whether I'm 40, 45 years old. So you can't avoid it. It's just when do you want to take on that task?

Joe Rogan (3:28)

So you retired at 33, 35 now.

So goddamn, man, you're right there. I mean, you have like four more years to be, unless you're Bernard Hopkins, then you have another decade.