By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr. says one of main reasons why he doesn’t want to see his son WBA/WBC 147lb champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) fight IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), because he believes that even if the two fighter agreed to fight at 154lbs to make it fair for Mayweather, Golovkin would still likely rehydrate up 20 to 30 pounds and wind up with a huge weight advantage over him.
Floyd Sr. says Mayweather is nothing but a 140lb fighter battling bigger guys at welterweight and junior middleweight. If he were to fight a bigger guy like Golovkin, he thinks his superior size would make it tough on Mayweather.
Golovkin is a smaller middleweight, who rehydrates usually only 10 pounds to fight at 170lbs for his fights. He doesn’t balloon up to the mid-170s like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, or rehydrate to the 180s like we saw with Daniel Geale recently after he made weight for his title shot against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto last June.
“I don’t want to see him [Mayweather] do that because all he’s [Golovkin] going to do is go up 20 to 30 pounds and fight Floyd, and Floyd don’t need to be fighting a guy that big,” Floyd Sr. said to esnewsreporting. “He’s big enough to be fighting guys at 154. That’s big enough for him. Floyd ain’t nothing but a 140 pound fighter.”
If Floyd Sr. is so worried about Golovkin rehydrating up 20-30 pounds after he makes weight at 154, then it would be an easy thing to have a rehydration clause inserted into the contract for a fight against him to keep Golovkin from regaining a certain amount of weight after the weigh-in. They could set it for 10 pounds, and have Golovkin at 164 at the most. It could be whatever they want it to be, and I bet Golovkin would still take the fight with him.
If Golovkin rehydrated 20 to 30 pounds after making weight at 154, it would put him at 174 to 184. Those are weights that Golovkin has never fought at before even when he was fighting at middleweight. Golovkin would likely be lighter than Canelo was when he fought Mayweather in 2013.
Just by Golovkin fighting at middleweight, I think it gives Floyd Sr. an excuse for not wanting to take the fight. It’s just a classification though. It doesn’t mean that Golovkin necessarily balloons up to the higher weights after he makes weight for his fights at middleweight. Golovkin is actually small enough to fight at junior middleweight.
Guys like Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara both rehydrate into the low 170s for their fights at junior middleweight. They choose to fight in the 154lb division rather than at 160 like Golovkin. I don’t see Golovkin being any bigger than those fighters or Canelo in terms of weight. He’s just a fighter who chooses to fight at middleweight rather than junior middleweight for some reason. It could be that Golovkin sees the opposition as more interesting at 160 than it is at 154, and he’d be right about that. The junior middleweight division doesn’t have that many big name fighters now that Canelo and Miguel Cotto are both fighting at middleweight.
Ultimately, I think it hurts Mayweather by him not taking the fight with Golovkin, because he would make a lot of money taking that fight, and it would give him an opportunity to achieve something really special before he leaves the sport in 2016. I think Mayweather is doing his career no favors by him fighting Andre Berto in a rematch on September 12th rather than him taking a tough opponent like Golovkin, who the boxing world wants to see him fight.
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