Mayweather should fight Golovkin at 154, says Mancini

By Boxing News - 07/22/2015 - Comments

golovkin444By Allan Fox: Former world champion Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini thinks that WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (48-0, 26 KOs) should come down to 154 to face WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) at a catch-weight in order to gain his respect and to give the fans a great fight.

Mancini has zero respect for Mayweather fighting Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) in his next fight on September 12th, if that’s who Mayweather winds up facing next. Mancini sees that fight as a waste of time for Mayweather because it’s such a mismatch.

At the same time, Mancini understands why Mayweather would want to fight an easy mark like Berto, because he’s getting a lot of money without any risk at all.

“This is a terrible fight. Berto’s got no chin,” Mancini said TMZ.com. “He’s a warrior, so he’ll come to fight. He’ll fight as long as he can and then get whacked out. I respect him [Mayweather], and respect his talent. There are certainly better fighters out there than Berto to fight. Golovkin said he’ll come down to 154. You [Mayweather] fought Canelo at 154, fight Golovkin at 154. Then if he beats Golovkin, I’ll says he’s top 10 all time,” Mancini said.

A fight between Mayweather and Golovkin would certainly catch the imagination from the boxing world, and would, if nothing else, show how courageous Mayweather is as a fighter. Even if Mayweather were to get knocked out by Golovkin, he will have at least won the respect of fans, the media and the fighters in the game.

As far as I can tell, Tim Bradley is the only welterweight in the division that has shown any interest in wanting to fight Golovkin, and I’m not sure if that was genuine interest on Bradley’s part. We haven’t seen guys like Keith Thurman, Brandon Rios, Shawn Porter, Manny Pacquiao and Marcos Maidana volunteering to fight Golovkin. None of them has expressed any interest whatsoever in facing the hard hitting GGG from Kazakhstan. But if Mayweather elects to face him, it’s going to show fans what kind of person he is because Mayweather’s unbeaten record would seriously be at risk of being erased if he took that fight.

Golovkin feels that he’s a small middleweight and could easily come down to 154 to face Mayweather. Indeed, Golovkin is lighter than Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, a fighter that Mayweather fought at a catch-weight of 152lbs in 2013 and easily beat. Golovkin rehydrates to 170 for his middleweight fights, whereas Canelo rehydrates to 175 for his fights at junior middleweights at 154. This means that in terms of weight, there’s no reason why Mayweather shouldn’t fight Golovkin. If he was willing to fight Canelo then he should be willing to fight Golovkin at 154.

Mayweather said recently that he could beat Golovkin because he didn’t see him as having anything special about him that would worry him. Mayweather went so far as to say that he could train Golovkin’s last opponent Willie Monroe Jr. and teach him enough to beat Golovkin. If Mayweather really believes that he can beat Golovkin or train someone to beat him, then he should test his theories.



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