By Chris Williams: Andre Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) gave it his best shot at trying to get IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) to face him at super middleweight for what would have been a big fight on HBO pay-per-view, but the Kazakhstan fighter failed to accept Ward’s offer to meet him in the ring.
Ward says he still has the texts from Golovkin’s management. Ward just thinks that Golovkin doesn’t want any part of fighting him. However, Ward isn’t too worried about it, because he’s moving up to light heavyweight and will be facing IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev (28-0-1, 25 KOs) later on in 2016 if Kovalev beats Jean Pascal (30-3-1, 17 KOs) in their rematch on January 30th at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Ward, 31, will be fighting for the first time at light heavyweight officially in early 2016 against an opponent still to be determined. In Ward’s last fight in June of this year, he fought at light heavyweight, but it was against a super middleweight in Paul Smith. You couldn’t really call that a light heavyweight contest because Smith was little more than a flabby super middleweight who had eaten his way to a chunky light heavyweight.
“I was willing to fight him [Golovkin] anywhere, anytime,” Ward said via yahoo sports. “I can show you the texts between my people and his people. He just doesn’t want to fight me. Period. He can come up with any excuse he wants to, but the fact is that the fans will never get to see this fight and it would have been a great one.”
It’s doubtful that Golovkin will ever agree to fight Ward, because I think he suspects he’d have a hard time trying to deal with Ward’s neutralizing defense and his fast hand speed and skillful boxing skills.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzEWSIxgFwM
Ward is like another Floyd Mayweather Jr. in many ways. He’s not easy to hit, and he’s able to negate the power of big punchers like Golovkin. We saw what Ward was able to do to Carl Froch four years ago in the Super Six tournament in beating him one-handed.
“I think Kovalev is a tougher challenge,” Ward said. “He’s bigger, stronger and, in my opinion, a better fighter. I think if you look at their résumés, there is no comparison between Kovalev’s résumé and Golovkin’s. There’s just not.”
Ward doesn’t need Golovkin in order to become more popular. Just by beating Kovalev next year, Ward will win over a lot of new fans, and he’ll be able to show the boxing world what would have likely happened had Golovkin accepted a fight with him.
Fans would know that Ward was too good for Golovkin. Ward can stay in a separate lane than Golovkin and show the fans that he’s the better fighter than him. It won’t be surprising to me if Ward is the bigger star than Golovkin by the end of 2016, because I don’t see Golovkin getting any big fights in 2016.
Golovkin can forget about fights against Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Peter Quillin, Andy Lee, Daniel Jacobs or Floyd Mayweather Jr. I don’t see any of those fighters agreeing to fight Golovkin, because there’s no money in it for them to face him. Golovkin showed to the world recently that he’s not a big enough name to bring in much more than 100,000 PPV buys on HBO.
Without Golovkin having the fan base to pull in in big numbers on HBO PPV, he’ll never get the big names to want to fight him. Ward is in a great position to get big money fights against guys like Kovalev and then go from there to take on other big light heavyweight stars like Jean Pascal and Adonis Stevenson.
I think Golovkin will eventually find himself badly in need of a fight against Ward in order to have someone popular to fight, but don’t be surprised if Ward ignores Golovkin’s call when he does come a calling. Golovkin has his chance to fight Ward, and he blew it. You can’t expect Ward to be sitting there waiting on a fight against Golovkin his entire career. If Golovkin isn’t ready to take the fight now then he might have blown his chance permanently. There’s no point in Ward even thinking about Golovkin at this point because he had his chance he blew it.
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