By Dan Ambrose: Light heavyweight contender Andre Ward (29-0, 15 KOs) says that IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez sent his fighter Sullivan Barrera (17-1, 12 KOs) to face him rather than sending in Golovkin last Saturday night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, California, Ward thinks that Barrera was sent in to test the waters for Golovkin to see it was safe first.
Ward ended up easily beating Barrera by a 12 round unanimous decision in their fight on HBO Boxing. After the fight, Sanchez initially complimented Ward on his performance in beating his man Barrera. However, when asked by the media whether he thought Ward could beat undefeated IBF/WBA/WBO light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev, Sanchez said this:
“This is a student [Ward]. We’re trying to match him against the teacher Kovalev, Golovkin. This is an impossible task. He [Ward] didn’t look like he could handle those guys today. He was able to handle a young man with 17 fights, but it’s a different story moving up to the elite guys.”
Ward didn’t like this flip flop on Sanchez’s part, as he thought that it was mean-spirited for him change his tune after he initially was complimentary of him about his win over Barrera. Ward seems to think that Sanchez didn’t want to give him his props. However, it may be that Sanchez was being straight up truthful when asked a question that had an obvious answer to it. If Sanchez really believes that Kovalev and Golovkin would be too good for Ward if/when those fights take place, you can’t expect Sanchez to lie and say Ward would wipe those two guys out. That would be crazy.
What Sanchez said about Ward not looking like the same fighter he’d been in the past also makes sense. You can’t watch the Ward from last Saturday night struggle against Barrera and say that it’s the same Ward that dominated guys like Carl Froch, Arthur Abraham, Mikkel Kessler and Allan Green in the Super Six tournament. That was a far better Ward back then compared to the one that looked like he wasn’t firing on all cylinders against Barrera. Ward looked like a car that was badly in need of a tune-up against Barrera. Ward was misfiring and shooting blue smoke out his tailpipe and not looking like he was the young star that had breezed through the Super Six tournament years ago.
“He [Sanchez] wanted to test the waters. He didn’t want to give his boy [Golovkin]. He wanted to give me Barrera,” said Ward to Fighthype.com. “He didn’t want to give me Golovkin. That’s okay.”
Sanchez isn’t the one that setup the Ward vs. Barrera fight. Sanchez is just a trainer, not a match-maker. Main Events is the promoter for Barrera, and they don’t do not promote Golovkin. It was Ward’s promoters at Roc Nation Sports that setup the fight between Ward and Barrera. Golovkin is promoted by K2 Promotions. There’s no way that Sanchez had any part in the Ward-Barrera fight being made. Ward can’t say that Sanchez wanted Barrera to test the waters for Golovkin because he didn’t play any role in the Ward vs. Barrera fight getting made.
In commenting on Floyd Mayweather Jr. telling Golovkin to fight Ward first before he’d agree to face him, Ward said “he’s right. You can’t call out a welterweight, man. You don’t get any stripes for that. Not even me, but some other legitimate super middleweights. You want Floyd to come up; somebody that’s done everything in the sport that doesn’t have to life another finger in the sport to prove anything, and yet you wouldn’t go up to fight at that time when I was still a super middleweight, the best super middleweight that’s out there after doing all that talking. You want to pick on me, and get a payday. Come on, man. It’s that high altitude, man,” said Ward.
Golovkin wasn’t out of bounds to say he wanted to fight Mayweather. You have to remember that Golovkin is a small middleweight, who could easily be fighting at junior middleweight.
Golovkin rehydrates to only 170lbs for his fights at middleweight. That’s just 10 pounds. Look at Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. He fights in the mid-170s, and he still considers himself a junior middleweight. It wouldn’t be hard for Golovkin to get down to 154 to fight Mayweather. With Ward, he was a fairly big super middleweight before he moved up to light heavyweight. It doesn’t make sense for Golovkin to fight a guy like Ward at super middleweight, especially when Ward wasn’t a huge star due to his years of inactivity.
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