The talented American takes on the WBA, WBO and IBF light heavyweight champion in Vegas on Saturday – and it should be a contest worthy of the hype

Four years ago, Andre Ward was poised to succeed Floyd Mayweather’s spot as the best prizefighter in the world, regardless of weight. The Olympic champion from Oakland had cleaned out the talent-stacked super middleweight division with a string of clinical victories over Mikkel Kessler, Allan Green, Sakio Bika, Arthur Abraham, Carl Froch and Chad Dawson. He offered a fresh-faced alternative to Mayweather’s pantomime villain: a happily married devout Christian with four children, Michael Jordan’s endorsement, a level-headed personality and talent to burn.

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It was all there for the taking – until it wasn’t. Ward’s clear path to mainstream stardom was interrupted by a host of injuries and a promotional spat that conspired to limit him to four fights in the last 50 months, during which he’s all but disappeared from public consciousness.

That could all change on Saturday night when Ward steps in with current WBA, WBO and IBF light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. It is the biggest fight of the year, and perhaps the best that can be made in boxing today. Both Ward, who is 32, and Kovalev, 33, are undefeated and in their primes. Both appear in the top five of virtually every pound-for-pound list. It’s the rare high-profile pay-per-view headliner worthy of the price tag, even if it’s drawn a sliver of the attention generated by last year’s overhyped blockbuster between Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao.

Ward is OK with that. For real. Even if the career-high $5m purse he will earn for Saturday’s work – compared to $2m for the champion, notably – is a fraction of the nine-figure windfalls that Mayweather and Pacquiao collected when they finally consented to terms years after the fight was truly significant.

“Pacquiao has a whole country behind him, while Floyd had the right opponents to get him into the position where he decided to go from Pretty Boy to Money Mayweather,” Ward said before Thursday’s final press conference at the MGM Grand. “Obviously I want to maximize my potential and go as far as I can go and as high as I can go, but I’m not chasing fame. I get enough of it. I’m fine going places and everybody not knowing who I am, but there’s not many places I go throughout the country where I’m not recognized or have to move a certain kind of way to get in and out. I’m comfortable with what I have because it’s never what I got into this sport for.”

It’s always been about the competition more than brand-building for Ward, who for nearly two decades has known nothing but victory. He went 114-5 in an extraordinary amateur career that culminated with an Olympic gold medal at the Athens Games, which remains the last time an American has topped the podium in men’s boxing. But for a fighter so inextricably defined by perfection, it’s those five defeats from a lifetime ago, and not the scores of wins that proceeded, that he can describe in animated, painstaking detail.

He will tell you about the loss to Sammy Orozco in his first ever competitive bout at the Santa Clara PAL when he was 10. He recalls the four-fight rivalry with a central Californian amateur named Joaquin Marquez, which they split two and two. Then an injustice against Ernie Guerrero, where the referee was from the opponent’s local boxing club in Arizona and deducted two points from Ward for phantom fouls. The fighter’s eyes widen in disbelief as he spins the tale: “His mother was literally a judge. Literally!” (He lost a 3-2 decision, Guerrero’s materfamilias no doubt the deciding factor.)

The last time Ward lost a fight was against John Revish at the 1997 National Silver Gloves tournament in Baton Rouge. He was 13.

“I remember what that felt like, I remember who it was, I remember where it was, I remember how I felt coming home,” he recalled. “And I just never wanted to feel like that again. I made up my mind that it was never going to happen again in terms of what I can control. That’s what drives me. I don’t know if it’s a fear of failure, but I’ve always had it.

“That’s why I train the way that I train. I don’t like to lose. God forbid if that ever happens, it’s not going to be because I wasn’t ready.”

When Ward climbs through the ropes on Saturday against Kovalev, it will mark only the seventh world championship bout in recorded history between two unbeaten fighters with 30 or more victories. It will also offer a delicious clash of styles: the well-schooled, hit-and-not-get-hit technical precision of Ward against the punishing power of the naturally bigger Kovalev, who has stopped 26 of 31 opponents inside the distance.

“He’s a bully,” Ward said of Kovalev, who will be making his ninth 175lb title defense. “It’s his temperament, it’s the things that he says, it’s his attitude. You don’t have to do one polarizing thing. I’ve been around him, I listen to the things he says.

“I’m not taking nothing from him. For every action, there’s going to be a reaction, times two. They can talk tough, but he’s not going to do anything in the ring to jeopardize my safety or try to intimidate and not expect a reaction.”

While the oddsmakers have made Ward a slight favorite, persisting questions over his inactivity make Saturday’s fight essentially a 50-50 affair. But after nearly 20 years without a loss, Ward has no interest in starting now.

“One thing I know is I’ve been given a gift,” Ward said. “I don’t think it’s the best talent in the world. I don’t think I’m the fastest. I look at Mayweather: he’s the type of guy where it looks like it comes easy to him. I don’t feel like this game comes easy to me. I feel like I’ve got to work and I’ve got to keep working. But God has put something in me since I was a kid, this drive. I’ve had it since I’ve been a kid. It’s a competitiveness, it’s a desire, I just want to be the best at whatever I do.”