By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF junior middleweight champion Ishe Smith (27-7, 12 KOs) took some shots at IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux this week. First off, Smith doesn’t think their October 17th fight will be all that it’s being built up to be.

As far as Smith’s concerned, the Golovkin-Lemieux fight will be a mismatch with Golovkin destroying Lemieux within six rounds. Smith doesn’t think Lemieux is a very good fighter. He notes that Lemieux has been beaten in the past when he stepped up against Joachim Alcine and Marco Antonio Rubio.

Smith also thinks it’s very strange that Golovkin is willing to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr. at 154, but not Andre Ward at 168. Smith doesn’t think that fighters are afraid of Golovkin at all. Smith didn’t say whether he would be interested in fighting him though. Given Smith’s size, age and lack of punching power, he probably wouldn’t last very long against a puncher like Golovkin.

“They’re selling a cake with a guy who’s not even close to being on that level, who’s actually beaten several time,” Smith said about Lemieux to boxingsocialist. “They’re telling you that this is going to be some kind of war. Triple G is a good fighter. That’s not a knock on him, but don’t sell me Lemieux. I don’t believe he’ll go six rounds. It’ll go six to eight rounds and then it’ll be stopped. I don’t think anybody is scared of him [Golovkin] like people put out. I don’t think so. I think there are fighters out there that will fight him. I just don’t know why he’s willing to fight Floyd at 154, but Ward at 68 is too big. I don’t get that. Which way is it? You want to fight a guy at 54, but you don’t want to challenge yourself to go to 68, and everyone is afraid of you. You can’t go up eight pounds to fight Andre Ward, but you say you’ll fight Floyd at 154, when Floyd walks around at 147. That’s my only problem. He’s [Golovkin] a good fighter, but damn don’t tell me everyone’s afraid of you. Everybody that gets in the ring isn’t afraid of you,” Smith said.

It’s pretty easy to understand why Golovkin is willing to fight Mayweather at 154 and not Ward at 168. The reason is there’s a lot of money to be made in Golovkin facing Mayweather. That’s a PPV fight that would likely make Golovkin $10 million.

A fight between Golovkin and Ward would be a PPV bout as well on HBO, but it’s not a fight that would make Golovkin a ton of money. I’d be surprised if he made even $2 million in a fight like that. There wouldn’t be a lot of PPV buys for a fight like that because neither fighter is a PPV fighter.

Golovkin needs an opponent that can bring in the fans for him to make a lot of money, and Mayweather is the guy. Ward wouldn’t likely bring many PPV buys. I think a Golovkin-Ward fight would be lucky if it did 100,000 buys. Those aren’t good numbers when you compare it to Mayweather’s typical fights bringing in over 1 million buys.

Ishe Smith will be facing Vanes Martirosyan (35-2-1, 21 KOs) this Saturday night on the undercard of the Mayweather vs. Andre Berto fight card on Showtime pay-per-view at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.