I heard about this, and I'm gonna give Ward a bit of credit here. It's the right thing to do as he's clearly never going to defend the title.
I even don't mind waiting for him to fight Kovalev so he can settle into the weight.
But if he starts to fight Blown up SMW's or unranked LHW's , I will be royally pissed off because it proves nothing to us or Him.
He should fight a ranked LHW in maybe Feb/March, followed by a top 5 LHW in about June/July , and Kovalev this time next year.
Maybe not likely to happen, but we'll see.