by Ryan Burton

Mandalay Bay, LAS VEGAS, NV - BoxingScene.com and a small group of reporters caught up with former pound-for-pound king Andre "SOG" Ward (32-0) after he called the action for HBO's triple header Saturday night. In the main event Mickey Roman stopped Orlando Salido who announced his retirement right after his loss.

The 33-year-old Northern California native hung up his gloves after his eighth round stoppage victory over Sergey Kovalev in their rematch in June. That fight also took place at the Mandalay Bay Events Center and Ward admitted that being back in the same building was an emotional experience.

"I don't know man. Like right now I am not thinking about fighting. I do miss it. When you retire - especially when you retire on top it is like a detox. It hits you in waves and you are minding your own business when all of a sudden you start missing it like when I flew in on Thursday I was fine. Then I started walking to my room and I realized this was the last place that I fought and I just started getting hit with all these emotions. It is not easy but it is part of the territory and you just have to deal with it," Ward explained.

Ward said that one of the key reasons why he decided to hang up his gloves was his health. He has battled a number of physical ailments over the past few years and said that he is working on a documentary to detail the struggles he had to overcome.

"It was a succession of moments. It wasn't just one moment. I have been dealing with a lot of physical issues for years. I don't talk about it. I just put my head down and deal with it. Right now I am working on my documentary and that is going to be really revealing," Ward said.

"You guys are going to see some of the things I had to go through before the first Kovalev fight and it is going to be alarming - the fact that we even made it to the fight. The shape that my shoulder was in before the surgery in 2013.

"All of those things we are going to open up and kind of pull the curtains so to speak and talk about a lot of these things. I have been dealing with this stuff for a while. It just came to a point where I would rather stop one early than one late."

Send questions or comments to ringsidewriter@gmail.com You can follow Ryan on Twitter @ringsidewriter