By Lyle Fitzsimmons

Next time, dammit… I’m listening to my wife.

Because she’s been around me nearly every day for nearly seven years and has endured work trips that have sent me from the Cayman Islands to the Nevada desert and many places in between, the lovely lady Danielle has gleaned a bit of knowledge about the fight game.

She knows the guys I like. She knows the guys I don’t like.

And she knows how much it irritates me when I miss a pick I should have nailed.

Especially, that is… when she’s smart enough to have seen it coming.

Case in point: Saturday night in Oakland.

Anyone who’s read me is aware of my affection for Andre Ward. I did a piece on him early in his career several years ago, hopped the aforementioned flight to the Caymans to see him dismantle Jerson Ravelo and was so taken that I’d not picked against him since – correctly forecasting the breakout upset of Mikkel Kessler, the intermediate wins in the Super Six and the crowning defeat of Carl Froch.

A win that, incidentally, looks a helluva lot better now thanks to Lucian Bute.

Anyway, the man-crush I’d developed on the former U.S. Olympian was so complete that I’d chosen him as the guinea pig in 2011, when my inaugural year-opening crystal ball column revealed that he’d be the consensus choice as the sport’s fighter of the year when December rolled around.

And when it did, I’ll be damned if it wasn’t spot on.

Problem is, when the chance arrived to follow through on all the ground-floor prognostication I’d laid… my good sense took a powder.

In spite of lessons recently taught by Roy Jones Jr. and Chris Byrd, who’d clearly been diminished when traipsing down from one weight to another, I was in the minority believing that another of my faves – Chad Dawson – would retain the role of bully when dumping seven pounds to face 168’s king.

I picked him in spite of a long history with his foe. I picked him in spite of the dubious logic of a precipitous scale plunge. And I picked him in spite of the last thing my wife said to me before I typed out my column last week: “You’re gonna be smart and say Ward by TKO, right?”

Turns out that come Sunday morning, I wasn’t the only one feeling regret.

“I will never again in my life work with a fighter moving down in weight,” said Dawson’s trainer, John Scully. “His next fight will be at 175 pounds, guaranteed. He’s disappointed, yes, but it wasn’t him in there. Andre Ward did a great job in there, don’t get me wrong.

“Andre Ward is a tremendous fighter, and based on his recent resume you can make a strong case for him being number one pound for pound. But that obviously was a weight-drained Chad.”

I wish I could make an excuse as simple as his, but it turns out my error was just dumb.

Next time… maybe I’ll let the wife write the friggin’ column.

For more on this story go to: http://www.boxingscene.com/?m=show&opt=printable&id=56951#ixzz26CTHVQaZ

FOOTNOTE: Our very own Charles ‘Killa’ Whittaker takes a step closer to a junior-middleweight world title fight when he fights Gabriel Rosado at the Sands Casino in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on 21 September. The fight will be televised live on NBC Sports Network from 8pm.