Danish champ Kessler prepared for test when he faces Olympic gold medalist Ward in Calif.

Kessler, Ward ready for Super Six tournament

NEW YORK — It’s rare that a champion is forced to go on the road, into a strange arena half a world away, to face an unbeaten former Olympic gold medalist who is certain to have thousands of hometown fans behind him.

Maybe Mikkel Kessler ought to reconsider this whole super middleweight tournament idea.

The WBA champion from Denmark, one of the heavy favorites to win the innovative Super Six World Boxing Classic, faces Andre Ward on Nov. 21 in the final first-round match. The fight at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, Calif., is just a short drive from where Ward was born.

“You always want to fight in your home country,” said Kessler, who did so Saturday, when he knocked out Gusmyr Perdomo in a mandatory title defense in Herning, Denmark. “But sometimes you have to travel, I said that before. Now I have to go to Oakland and fight in Ward’s back yard — it’s going to be a big experience.”

For the young American, too.

While the hard-punching Kessler (42-1, 32 KOs) is one of the tournament favorites, the 25-year-old Ward (20-0, 13 KOs) and former Olympic teammate Andre Dirrell are longshots, picked by oddsmakers on both sides of the Atlantic to finish behind WBC champion Carl Froch and former middleweight champions Arthur Abraham and Jermain Taylor.

Ward has never faced someone the caliber of Kessler, whose only loss came at the hands of longtime super middleweight kingpin Joe Calzaghe. In fact, his only marquee victory was over Edison Miranda before another hometown crowd, in a fight that was never very close.

“You beat a guy like Mikkel Kessler, it’s going to send shock waves through the boxing world, send shock waves through the Super Six, because nobody’s really picking me to win,” the confident Ward said during a conference call Thursday.

“They say, ‘Well, he’s only lost to Joe Calzaghe, there’s no way this young kid can pull this off,’ and I love that,” Ward said. “That’s what I’m about, because when I do pull it off, that’s going to send a shock wave around the world.”

The tournament is designed like a round-robin tournament, with each boxer guaranteed three fights and receiving two points for a victory, one point for a draw and a bonus point for a knockout. The four with the most points advance to seeded semifinals, with the championship bout scheduled for early 2011.

Ward is the only American who doesn’t have to travel for the first round.

Taylor heads to Berlin to fight Abraham, who was born in Armenia and now makes his home in Germany, to open the tournament Oct. 17. In the other half of a split-site doubleheader, Froch will defend his WBC belt against Dirrell in Nottingham, England.

“I think Mikkel is probably the odds-on favorite,” said Showtime boss Ken Hershman, who masterminded the tournament. “He’s certainly got his hands full with an Olympic gold medalist. He’s never lost a fight. He doesn’t know how to lose.”

Ward’s promoter, Dan Goossen, also believes the Danish champion is the favorite.

“No doubt about it,” Goossen said. “They’ve said Kessler, Abraham, Froch, Taylor, then it’s Ward and Dirrell, the two young pups. It’s a big challenge for America right now.”

Ah, yes. Let those patriotic intonations begin.

While the tournament isn’t designed to pit the United States against Europe, that’s how the first-round pairings shook out. In reality, it’s supposed to whittle one of boxing’s deepest divisions down to a single champion, cutting through the alphabet titles and all the other rhetoric that fight fans have come to abhor.

Kessler’s promoter, Kalle Sauerland, understands the importance in that, which is why he has no problem with Kessler taking a big chance by fighting in Ward’s hometown.

“I think the fans in Oakland better turn out because Ward is going to need every last single one of them,” Sauerland said. “We wouldn’t have had to travel as champion into this guy’s backyard and allow him the best possible chance to take away the title, and I think that speak volumes about Mikkel.”