Selling drugs, tragedy and boxing greatness: Andre Ward opens up

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As his documentary “S.O.G: The Book of Ward” premieres on Showtime Friday night, boxing Hall of Famer and former pound-for-pound No. 1 in the world Andre Ward chats with The Post for some Q&A. 

The last American male boxer to win Olympic gold, Ward retired in 2017 at 33 years old after finishing his famed career 32-0 and winning unified world titles at super middleweight and light heavyweight. 

Largely guarded about his personal life during his career, Ward re-examines his turbulent upbringing in the film, which was produced by Uninterrupted and SpringHill — LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s media company. 

From his parents’ drug addictions to his own detour into selling and abusing drugs, to his devotion to Christianity, one of boxing’s greatest champions peels back the curtain: 

Watching the documentary back, what was that like? Were you happy with the finished product and how it came out? 

After I got through all the different cuts, and all the critiquing, all of that, when I did the final watch down in Los Angeles — just happy, man. And I can be hard to please, sometimes, when it comes to my art and work and things that I have my hands on. I just smiled, this documentary is everything that I wanted it to be. When I first made my pitch to SpringHill and Showtime, this is what I wanted. It’s not a sports documentary, it’s not a boxing documentary, this is a human interest piece. This is something that everybody, if we did it right, I want to be able to get something from this. And I feel that — you can cry in this documentary, you can laugh, there’s suspense, everything. Very, very pleased.  

Why was now the right time to tell your story through this documentary? 

I grew up in an era where we didn’t really talk about our business, that’s how I was raised. We don’t share our business. The struggles that I had as a teenager, just coming out of that in 2004, I didn’t in the least bit feel compelled to start talking about that, nor was I ready. As I became a professional and got into my professional career, I kind of started being like ‘man, maybe I wanna do this one day, we’ll see.’ But I still wasn’t ready. I had to get my mother’s blessing at a certain point. I had to be ready. I thought long and hard about how my dad would feel about it, and I felt like he would be OK with it if I told the story the right way. There’s a time and a place for everything. 

But I think the turning point for me came when I would talk to young guys, and they would be receptive. But when they would have struggles, I would be like ‘man, I understand, I get it.’ And they would be like ‘nah, you don’t get it.’ I would be like ‘I probably did more than you, I get it.’ That was the turning point for me when I realized that I’ve got to tell this story, because it’s hard for people to see beyond who I am and what I do today. If you don’t tell it, they won’t know. I became more compelled as I got older, and I knew I wanted to tell it, but tell it the right way. And here we are. 

How is it important for someone with your influence and stature to tell your story and help break that stigma? 

Very important. We talk a lot about how men have toxic masculinity. We talk a lot about, especially this day and age, how we don’t speak when things are troubling us. We suppress it and we just stuff it. Being open and being vulnerable, being transparent about things, I just hope it inspires somebody to do the same. It might not be on a public forum, but just amongst your family, your loved ones, because we can overcome a lot by talking through it, working through it, getting counsel about it, and just getting it out. I know for me, just going through this process with this documentary, it’s been therapeutic. I’ve had to reopen old wounds. I’ve had to assess how I felt about certain things that happened. I had to go over, did I do this right? Did I handle that right? Man, I probably should’ve done a better job over here. It’s been a journey, but it’s been a great one. I’m here today a healthier person because of it. 

How much does this documentary provide a new perspective on you for people who only watched you inside the ring and demonstrate how much you overcame? 

I hope it does what we set out to do. I’ve said from the beginning of this process that I hope that my biggest critic can at least walk away and say ‘I don’t agree with everything,’ or ‘I still don’t fully understand the guy, but I understand him a little bit better, and why he moved the way that he moved and did some of the things that he did. And refrained from doing some of the things that he refrained from.’ And I hope from my biggest supporter, that they walk away and they have a confirmation of why they‘ve supported me and rocked with me this whole time. You’re gonna have hate, you’re gonna have criticism – “you shouldn’t have done this, you shouldn’t have talked about that.” That comes with it, but this documentary is not for them. It’s for those we hope can take something from it. 

Did going through the process of this documentary unveil any new emotions about prior life events or bring back repressed memories? Did it provide you with a new perspective on your own life? 

My father died in 2002. I think part of my coping mechanism was just burying a lot of things. I wouldn’t acknowledge the anniversary of his death.  It would come and go and I would be like “wow, it just passed.” Even his birthday, I just buried it and I stuffed it. Reliving that, it was almost like a fresh emotion again. Going through the struggles, when I was in North Oakland and selling drugs. It’s like ‘man, I actually did that. That’s crazy.’ I’m so far removed from being that person that it’s kind of hard to believe that you were there. The highs and the lows in boxing — the further I get away from that, it’s kind of hard to believe that I actually did that for as long as I did. A lot was re-lived. I think also, the therapeutic part was, we started working on this around 2016. But it was good for me to get on the road, and to be active, and to have something to do fresh off retirement. We got on the road, me and my team, and we got like 42 interviews. And I was there for most of them. And it was just good to have a goal and a mission in front of me at that time. You may retire, but the competitiveness and the drive don’t retire. You need to have it directed at a certain direction. At that particular time, I needed that. 

Looking back on so many events in your life, would you do anything differently in either your personal life or professional career? 

If there’s only one thing that I can only point to, and it’s not that I didn’t have a good time during my career, but I probably would’ve forced myself to enjoy the process a little bit more. I can get very singularly focused and locked in, when I’m in camp and different things like that. I probably would’ve enjoyed the process a little bit more. Smiled a little bit more. Laughed a little bit more. Yes, the moment is big, but I don’t have to be locked in 24/7. I probably would have did a little bit more of that. 

You were particularly guarded about your personal life during your career — why? 

I’m gonna say this — I think some of that is overstated. I think that’s sort of the narrative that’s attached to me, but if you look at the fight camp 360s, if you look at interviews I’ve done, I talk about a lot of stuff. It’s just not what they really wanted to hear. I guess it’s boring for, not just fighters, because I’ve seen fighters that can do that and get away with it, but a lot of times for an African American fighter to be a family man, to be at home with his kid, it’s not exciting. “Show me something else, get entertainment.”

There was a lot of stuff that I did talk about. I talked about the struggles in boxing. I talked about wanting to be different and enlightened, that just wasn’t what they wanted to here. I think a lot of that stuff about what I didn’t share was overstated, there was a lot there that got left on the floor. But many picked it up as well, and I’m talking just about media right now. The other aspect of it, the parts that I didn’t share or was guarded about, rightfully so. Just because somebody has a microphone in your face, just because they’re doing an article on you, that doesn’t mean I have to share everything. You’ve got to be worthy of that. You’ve got to be trustworthy. My instincts are really good. When I scan the room, there’s not a lot of people I can point to in that room where I can say ‘I trust you with this story.’ Once you do interviews, and you read the interview and you realize that ‘wow, I gave a passionate 30-minute interview, and there’s only like three quotes that are used, and it seems like the story was already written, you just needed my quotes to validate the story.’ You start to become wiser. And part of becoming wiser, you start to say less, and you control the narrative. Media don’t like that. 

Is that a flaw in how the media and fans view boxers? 

No doubt, for sure. And primarily, it’s with African American fighters. That’s just the history of the sport. They’ll point to the [Muhammad] Ali’s, they’ll point to the Floyd’s [Mayweather], and that’s cool, they have their lane and I’m not knocking that, I love both of those guys. But it’s not fair, you know how many fighters have crashed and burned trying to be the next Ali? You know how many fighters crashed and burned trying to duplicate what Floyd did? You can’t duplicate that. You’ve got to be who you are. We all pull from the guys that went before us in one way or another, but you can’t duplicate that. 

The indictment is against us as a sport and how we view people. But I don’t think we want to change anytime soon. That’s cool, but don’t get mad if fighters don’t want to fit that mold and that status quo. 

In the documentary, one of the more emotional scenes was when you talked about your devotion to Christianity. What impact did that have on you in your career and personal life? 

It saved my life, and it sustained me throughout my career. I’d like to believe that on a good day, I’d still be able to maintain and deal with the fame and the money and the pressure in the right way. But in reality, I don’t think I would have. I think you guys would have been reading about me under the ticker a few times on SportsCenter. Because at some point, I would’ve went left. For me, it saved my life but it also sustained me and it’s sustaining me to this day.   

It’s not just that it’s a book of rules and I’m just trying to act like this. No, a power came into my life that changed me. I can’t deny that. I feel like if guys can get on television and say whatever they want to say, well if you ask me how I was able to win this fight and how I was able to get through training camp and got to this point, I’m gonna give God the glory and I’m not gonna apologize for it. 

How do the experiences in your own life and your devotion to Christianity impact you as a father and husband?     

It’s everything. This is the foundation my father gave me. I didn’t really grow up in the church, but my father would always read the bible. And he would try to teach from those principles. And I hope to do the same. It influences every aspect of my life. I boxed for some time, I’ve got other gifts and abilities to create story-telling and business and different things like that, but I believe my true calling is to preach the gospel. Me and my wife are youth pastors right now, I’m a licensed minister, you also saw that at the end of the documentary. This is my true calling, this is my life. 

Your decision to retire at 33, while still seemingly in your prime and undefeated is a major part of your story. Why was that the right time? Do you still feel it was the right time? 

I do, I do believe it was the right time. Why was it the right time? You just feel it, and you just know. It’s really hard to describe and it won’t make sense. But when I used to talk to retired athletes, I would ask ‘How do you know?’ And they would say ‘You just gotta know.’ And it didn’t make sense to me at that time. People don’t really know, I wanted to retire several years before I did. You just start to count the costs. I’ve been in the pressure cooker since I was a kid. Nineteen years old, tournaments, making weight, away from my family, sacrificing, not being able to eat certain things, not being able to do certain things, that stuff starts to add up. At a certain point, the money is not enough to keep you. The pull of the crowd is not enough to keep you. Even your love for the sport is not enough to keep you. You want your freedom back. You want to be a regular person. 

That was pulling on me two or three years before I did retire. My wife would always say it’s not the time, my pastor would always say it’s not quite time. I thought I was done after [Sergey] Kovalev 1, and that wasn’t the right time. Then I went into the [rematch], had a great second training camp, great fight, and then I was like “wait a second, maybe I’ll keep going.” Then all of a sudden one day I woke up, and it was like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders. And I was like ‘I don’t want to do this anymore.’ And I followed through with it.   

What has your experience with Maverick Carter and Showtime been like? Why were they the right promotions to tell this story? 

I’ve had a relationship with those guys for some time now. My publicist and I were thinking about production companies and who we should work with and she asked if I reached out to them since we were good friends. I was like ‘let me see.’ I know SpringHill, the whole thing that attracted me to them was the Shut Up and Dribble campaign, and LeBron James always speaking out about being more than an athlete. That’s right up my alley. When I talked to Maverick, it was a no-brainer. It just fit, it was natural. 

Then I pitched it to Showtime, and the thing that got me about [Showtime Sports President] Stephen Espinoza, is that he echoed something that I had been saying behind the scenes the whole time. Which was, this is not a sports documentary, this is more than that. And when he said that on the Zoom call, when I was pitching this documentary, that confirmed it for me. They’ve been a huge blessing all the way through. They’ve supported the vision. It’s just been a perfect marriage and a perfect relationship. That’s why we have the piece that we have today. 

Which current boxer most reminds you of yourself?

I would say Shakur Stevenson. He really loves boxing. I really loved boxing. Obviously I still do, watching fights, I love it, I love being in the gym, I love training. Guys are getting away from that today. It’s more about showing on social media what you’re doing. And they want the idea of what comes with being a champion, but actually doing the work and falling in love with the process, he loves boxing. He’s dedicated to it. He’ll say things sometimes and I’ll be like ‘man that’s my younger self.’ Obviously, he wants to continue to build his brand and he wants to make the money that he can make, but he’s really a throwback. He’s a guy that’s like ‘I want to fight you because I think I’m better, and you think you’re better than me, and I want to prove that I am the best.’ That also is slowly leaving the sport. He’s probably the guy that’s most like me. 

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