By Dan Ambrose: Despite Floyd Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 26 KOs) retiring recently with his unbeaten record intact there is still a lot of debate whether he would have been able to beat IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) if he had elected to face the powerful middleweight before hanging up his gloves.
Mayweather felt that Golovkin was too big for him to be fighting because he was in the middleweight division. However, Golovkin is actually lighter than Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, a fighter that Mayweather easily beat two years ago in September 2013.
Freddie Roach, the trainer for Manny Pacquiao, Miguel Cotto, and many other top fighters in boxing, says that Mayweather would have beaten Golovkin had they faced each other. What’s interesting about that is Pacquiao almost beat Mayweather in their fight earlier this year in May 2015 in losing to him by a narrow 12 round decision.
Roach believes that if Pacquiao hadn’t come into the fight with Mayweather with a preexisting shoulder injury, then he would have beaten him. So what Roach is basically saying is that he thinks that not only Mayweather would beat Golovkin, but so would the 5’6” Pacquiao. That’s really hard for me to sink my teeth around the image of the 36-year-old Pacquiao beating a puncher like Golovkin.
While I have a great deal of respect for Roach as a trainer, I don’t believe for a second that Pacquiao could beat Golovkin. But if Roach really believes that, then he should get on the phone and try and convince both Pacquiao and his promoter Bob Arum that they need to take the fight with Golovkin next on April 9th in Pcquiao’s final fight of his career.
“Floyd would out-box him,” Roach said to Fighthype about who would win in a fight between Mayweather and Golovkin. “He’s [Mayweather] never been knocked out by a professional fighter yet, so what makes this guy [Golovkin] so different? I know he’s [Golovkin] a pretty good puncher, but I’m sure Floyd’s faced a lot of good punchers in his lifetime from the amateurs to the pros. Has he been down once? Not too many guys hurt him, so I would pick Floyd to win that fight,” Roach said.
It’s expected that Roach would say that Mayweather beats Golovkin, because Roach is still hoping that Mayweather comes out of retirement to face his fighter Pacquiao. By saying that Golovkin beats Mayweather, it would be a situation where Roach would be putting down his own fighter Pacquiao, because he couldn’t beat Mayweather.
It would be an interesting fight between Mayweather and Golovkin if the “Money” man were to have accepted it. I just don’t think Mayweather would have anything to keep Golovkin off of him. Mayweather was able to keep Pacquiao off of him with right hands, but he was less effective in getting Miguel Cotto to back off in their fight in 2012.
Mayweather beat the hulking Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in 2013, but Canelo fought a really stupid fight by trying to box Mayweather rather than using his size and just wading in. Golovkin wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and out-box a fighter like Mayweather the way that Canelo did. Golovkin would go right after Mayweather looking to KO him with every shot.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC_IVHCgpqc
Mayweather is a decent puncher on the outside, but when his opponents get inside on him, he doesn’t have much to offer. Marcos Maidana was able to get inside on Mayweather quite frequently in their two fights. The problem for Maidana is that he didn’t have punching power to KO Mayweather from close range the way that Golovkin would.
Mayweather’s reluctance to accept a fight with Golovkin is almost like a confession from Mayweather that he doesn’t believe that he could beat him, because if he really felt that he could defeat the Kazakhstan fighter, I think he would have ended his career with a fight against him rather than taking on Andre Berto and getting skewered by the press and the fans.
That was a really poor way for Mayweather to end his career, because he tainted his career with that fight on the way. It was almost as bad as a loss the way Mayweather was criticized by fans.
Roach still can’t seem to let go with the fact that his fighter Manny Pacquiao lost to Mayweather earlier this year. Roach said “With two hands, he [Pacquiao] would have been even better.”
I don’t think a rematch between Pacquiao and Mayweather would be any different the second time around no matter how healthy Pacquiao was. His fighting style is too sloppy for him to beat a skilled technician like Mayweather. Now if Pacquiao had the one-punch type of power that Golovkin has, then I could see him beating Mayweather, but he doesn’t have that kind of power.
If Pacquiao could punch like Golovkin, I don’t think Mayweather would have ever agreed to fight him. If Pacquiao had a record of 34-0, 31 knockouts, like Golovkin does, I think it’s extremely unlikely that Mayweather would have ever agreed to fight him.
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