On March 26th, Sullivan Barrera (17-1, 12 KO’s) had the most significant fight of his career when he took on Andre Ward (29-0, 15 KO’s) in Oakland, California. Despite another long layoff, Ward was the better fighter and beat Barrera with unanimous decision victory which did not sit well with the Cuban fighter.After everything was said and done and HBO’s cameras were no longer broadcasting live on the air, Barrera went on to bash Ward and call him a dirty fighter. Today (March 29th) Barrera has a bit of a different tone to him. While he is taking the first loss of his career pretty hard he plans to use it as motivation.
“I will work harder,” stated Barrera via social media. “I want to thank Mr. Ward for [the] opportunity and all [of] my team for [the] fight. I walked into the gym this morning [feeling] down but I know I have [to] work harder. I learned a lot from this fight.”
Prior to his loss to Ward, Barrera was in line to take on Sergey Kovalev for Kovalev’s light heavyweight titles but that opportunity will now go to Ward. Instead, Barrera has to build from this loss and look at what changes he can make to better himself. There are plenty of names in the light heavyweight division that he could face and should he win it would allow him to quickly re-enter the title picture for Kovalev or even Adonis Stevenson.
