By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum thinks WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golokvin (33-0, 30 KOs) needs to forget about trying to get fights against Miguel Cotto and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez because he doesn’t see either of those fighters giving Golovkin the time of day.
Arum feels that they will make more money facing each other than facing a guy like Golovkin, who doesn’t bring the same kind of money to the table as they do for his fights. Arum thinks that HBO has been babying Golovkin by letting him fight lower level opposition without insisting that he fight the good fighters.
Just who those good fighters are is unclear because Arum didn’t have anything to say about who Golovkin should be fighting at 160, other than Canelo or Cotto, who aren’t interested in fighting him. Instead of Golovkin staying at 160, Arum thinks Golovkin should move up to 168 and face bigger fighters if he wants to get the big paydays. Arum says he would be interested in matching his top super middleweight Gilberto Ramirez (31-0, 24 KOs) against Golovkin at any point.
“Golovkin can talk all he wants about Canelo and Cotto, but they’ll do a lot better fighting each other than fighting him,” Arum said via Fighthype. So I think Golovkin should look at some of the 168 pound guys and go up there. This is where big money fights can be made, but they’re dangerous.”
When asked if he’d be interested in matching Golovkin against Arum’s undefeated super middleweight Gilberto Ramirez, Arum said “In two minutes we’d be interested in that fight with Golovkin. I don’t think he’s a match for Gilberto,” Arum said.
Asking the 5’10” Golovkin to move up and fight the 6′ 2½″ Gilberto Ramirez is a waste of time, because it’s a fight that no one would care about.
The 23-year-old Ramirez is a complete unknown in the U.S. at this point. The hardcore boxing fans know about Ramirez, but not the casual fans. Besides that, Ramirez would stand no chance at all of beating Golovkin. We just saw Ramirez go life and death with Maxim Vlasov in his last fight. That was a slight step up for Ramirez, and he getting nailed left and right. Andre Ward watched the fight and was surprised at how easy poor Ramirez’s defense was. Arum would be doing Ramirez no favors at all if he were to match him against Golovkin because he would get knocked out and gain nothing from the fight.
Golovkin is a small fighter for the middleweight division, and he could be fighting at junior middleweight like Canelo if he wanted to. Golovkin only rehydrates 10 pounds for his middleweight fights, which suggests that he’s not a big fighter for the weight. You’ve got a lot of middleweights that rehydrate 18 to 20 pounds and come into their middleweight fights at 180 rather than 170 like Golovkin.
The only guys worth fighting for Golovkin at 168 right now are Carl Froch, James DeGale and George Groves. That’s just three guys. The other fighters like Andre Ward, the Dirrell brothers, Gilberto Ramirez, Arthur Abraham and Badou Jack don’t have large fan bases in the U.S, and it would be worthless for Golovkin to fight them. It would be nice if DeGale, Froch or Groves were interested in fighting Golovkin right now, but they’re not. None of them would likely face Golovkin in 2015, so it’s not even worth discussing.
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