Golovkin’s trainer responds to Mayweather

By Boxing News - 11/13/2015 - Comments

1-GolovkinLemieux_Hoganphotos2By Dan Ambrose: This week, Floyd Mayweather Jr. said he wants to see IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) take risks with his career by moving up in weight to the 168lb division and face the bigger Andre Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) in order to prove himself to him that he’s as good as people think he is.

Until Golovkin makes this move in facing Ward at a higher weight, Mayweather says he won’t be convinced that he’s as good as people think he is. Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez was asked about Mayweather’s comments, and he said without mentioning Ward’s name specifically that Golovkin can’t face fighters that have legal issues or injuries.

Ward had promotional problems with his former promoter for a while. Ward also had injury problems in the past, including right now that has kept him from fighting.

“It’s all about taking risks and taking chances,” Mayweather said to Fighthype.com. “I did it. I took risks. I took chances. I’m just waiting to see if Triple G is going to go up and fight Andre Ward. I’m going to be convinced when he can go up and beat Andre Ward. Until then, I’m not convinced,” Mayweather said.

Even if Golovkin did move up to super middleweight right now, he likely wouldn’t be able to fight Andre Ward, because the American fighter has moved up to 175 to go after IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev and other top fighters. If Mayweather is expecting Golovkin to move up two divisions to face Ward at 175, he’s dreaming, because that’s not going to happen. With Ward moving to 175, it makes a potential fight against Golovkin now entirely impossible because Golovkin can’t chase the 31-year-old Ward and put his career on hold while he heals up from his periodic injuries like the one he’s dealing with right now that caused him to pull out of the November 21st fight card at the Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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“GGG will continue to fight and attempt to unify the 160 pound division, move up or down when it makes financial sense and or when we have a willing, dependable opponent,” Sanchez said via thesweetscience.com. “Fights that GGG is having were planned way in advance, sometimes six to 8 months, so the planning of fights and opponents have to be penciled in against names that are for sure. GGG wants to fight three to four times per year, when opponents have persistent issues, injuries, legal troubles, it would be very irresponsible for us as the GGG team to book or schedule fights with names that are not dependable,” Sanchez said.

Golovkin and Ward will likely face each other in the future after Golovkin cleans out the middleweight division and has no other opposition for him to fight. That would be sooner rather than later if Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Peter Quillin, Daniel Jacobs and Andy Lee all choose not to fight him. If those guys decide they want no part of Golovkin, then it will leave him no other choice but to move up to 168 to look for fights against guys like Ward, James DeGale, Badou Jack and Arthur Abraham.

Instead of Mayweather asking Golovkin, he should have accepted Golovkin’s challenge to fight him at 154lbs, because he was willing to do that for him. Instead of Mayweather taking the easy way out by ending his career with a whimper by facing Andre Berto, as Oscar De La Hoya said, Mayweather should have finished his career with a bang by agreeing to a fight against Golovkin at 154. A lot of boxing fans think that Mayweather got scared and wanted no part of Golovkin after he issued that challenge.

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To be sure, Mayweather couldn’t say that Golovkin was too big for him, because he’s actually lighter than the 175lb Canelo. Golovkin only rehydrates to 170lbs for his fights, which makes him lighter than Canelo. The main difference though is that Golovkin has one punch power, and Canelo doesn’t have that kind of punching power. I think Mayweather didn’t want any part of fighting a guy like Golovkin, because he wouldn’t have been able to depend his defense to get him through that fight. Mayweather would have had to depend on his chin, and there are limits to what even a great fighter like Mayweather can handle in terms of hard punches.



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