By Allan Fox: In a poll at RingtTV, Boxing fans were asked who they wanted Floyd Mayweather Jr. to fight next if they were to exclude Manny Pacquiao, and surprisingly most of the fans picked WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin at 23.9 percent. The next fighter that fans showed interest in Mayweather fighting was Sergio Martinez at 21.9 percent.
It’s interesting to note that fans want to see Mayweather move up to 160 to fight monster punchers like Golovkin and Martinez because there are quite a few interesting bouts at 140 and 147 that you would think fans would also be interested in. It seems that fans feel that the only way that Mayweather’s opponents have any chance of beating him is if they pick out fighters from the middleweight, super middleweight and eve light heavyweight divisions.
It’s probably not possible for Mayweather to ever face Golovkin or Martinez because they fight for HBO, and Mayweather is a Showtime fighter. It’s not going to be a fight that can be put together unless one of those fighters gets HBO to agree to let them fight Mayweather on Showtime. Would HBO agree to letting Golovkin and Martinez fight Mayweather on Showtime? I don’t think they would ever agree to that because it would be helping out Showtime, while at the same time it would leave HBO with a fighter that will most likely be beaten by Mayweather. When Golovkin or Martinez do return to fighting on HBO, they’ll have a loss from Mayweather on their resume and their cache won’t be what is it now with them winning all the time.
Golovkin badly wants to fight Mayweather and he’s talked about even dropping down to 154 to make it happen, but it’s not going to happen. Golovkin would be better off moving up to 167 to fight Carl Froch or Andre Ward rather than talking about facing Mayweather on a rival cable network. It’s doubtful that Mayweather would agree to the fight with Golovkin even if he were to fight on Showtime. I think it’s a bad match-up for Mayweather because he’d take a lot of punishment in winning the fight. I do believe he’d win, but it would be a fight where he’d take a lot of head shots from Golovkin. There would be blood. The same applies to Sergio Martinez. It’s a fight that Mayweather would win, but he’d take punishment from him. and that’s not something that Mayweather wants to experience at this point in his career. I do think that Mayweather would agree to fighting both of them if they were hugely popular fighters that would enable him to make a bundle, but that’s not the case. Mayweather could make more money fighting a rematch against Miguel Cotto than he could fighting the likes of Golovkin or Martinez. Those guys are really strong punchers, and it wouldn’t be a picnic for Mayweather against either of them.
Golovkin has a fight against Curtis Stevens next month on November 2nd and there’s no telling whether Golovkin will win that fight. Martinez is still healing up from the injuries that he sustained in his last fight against Martin Murray last April.
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