By Dan Ambrose: Former junior middleweight champion Ishe Smith doesn’t believe that Mexican star Saul “Canelo” Alvarez needs to fight IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin in the near future. Smith sees the 26-year-old Canelo as having already established himself as a star in boxing. It’s Golovkin who needs Canelo and not the other way around.
Smith says that if it was up to him, he would make Golovkin jump through hoops to get a fight against him if he were in Canelo’s shoes. In other words, if Canelo wants Golovkin to fight him at 155, then he’d have to agree to that weight if he wanted to get the fight against him. Golovkin has nothing that Canelo needs for him to become a star, because he’s already accomplished that.
Smith thinks that Golovkin is overrated by the boxing media, and he sees him getting a free pass for having recently fought welterweight Kell Brook. Smith feels that if Floyd Mayweather Jr. made the same move in selecting a smaller opponent from the lightweight division, he would take a lot of criticism from the fans. They would see it as a weak move, and would let Mayweather know about it. Smith feels that Golovkin hasn’t been criticized in the way that he should have.
Smith also thinks that Golovkin should move up to super middleweight to get the bigger fights due to the guys from his own weight class not being interested in fighting him/ To Smith, it should be an easy thing for Golovkin to get fights. If the guys in his own weight class don’t want to figt him, then he should move up to 168 and fight guys like Badou Jack and James DeGale, both of which are world champions at super middleweight.
Smith said this to Fighthype.com about his thoughts on Golovkin:
“Triple G gets too much credit that I think he deserves,” said Ishe Smith. “Imagine if Floyd [Mayweather] did some [expletive] like that. Imagine if Floyd was at 147 and he fought a guy that was at 135.”
“And that’s the best opponent he’s fought today, and that’s the only champion he’s fought today,” said former light welterweight title challenger Ashley Theophane.
Golovkin is expected to fight WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Danny Jacobs in early 2017. That will be a good fight. Most boxing fans would agree that Jacobs is a very respectable opponent for Golovkin or anyone. If Golovkin can beat Jacobs, it would give him a nice name to add to his resume.
“Just imagine some of the [expletive] that he gets away with that these writers, you guys, let him get away with, but nobody calls him out for it. That’s amazing to me, man, that nobody calls him out. Could you imagine if Floyd was going to fight a guy like that or if he was asking him to come up and fight? Nobody gave him shit about how you can’t sell tickets. He’s [Golovkin] constantly talking about fighting 154 pounders, and he’s the middleweight champion of the world. That [expletive] is crazy to me. It’s definitely a double standard. I don’t want to say it’s racism. I just think it’s crazy. I don’t know what it is. You guys are infatuated. You guys love this guy, because Floyd gets called out for two pounds. He makes [Saul] Canelo [Alvare] weigh-in 152, when Canelo’s making middleweights weigh 155. ‘Oh, you have him at a disadvantage. You made him weight 152.’ Okay, the weight is 154. He said it. Canelo said it himself. ‘I can fight at 152 if he’s worried about that.’ So Floyd calls his bluff. But when Canelo makes people weigh 155, nobody says [expletive]. It’s crazy to me. This guy can go fight a welterweight, and you guys say how great he is. ‘Oh, he’s great.’ Golovkin constantly says, ‘I’ll fight this guy at 154,’ but he can’t fight [Andre] Ward at 168. He can’t fight guys at 168, but he can fight guys at 154. That don’t make sense to me. It’s easier to gain weight than to lose weight,” said Smith.
As far as I know, the only guy at 154 that Golovkin is interested in fighting is Saul Canelo Alvarez, and he’s a middleweight in size. Golovkin has offered to meet Floyd Mayweather Jr. at 154, but those are the only two guys that he’s talked about wanting to fight in that weight class. As far as IBF welterweight Kell Brook goes, it was his promoter Eddie Hearn who contacted Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler to offer him the fight. It wasn’t a fight that Golovkin or Loeffler attempted to make on their own. But with the money that was available for that fight, it would have been foolish for Golovkin not to take it. Who would turn down the kind of money that Golovkin made? You can’t blame him one bit for taking that fight.
Golovkin is a small middleweight, who could easily fight at 154 if he wanted to. It wouldn’t have made much sense for him to move up and fight Andre Ward at super middleweight. It wouldn’t have been a huge money fight, and Golovkin would be giving up a ton of size to Ward. If the fight turned into a wrestling match with Ward grabbing and holding all night long, it would be even worse. You have to favor Golovkin to beat Ward in an actual fight with a referee doing his job to control his mauling, but Golovkin would have a hard time if there a useless referee working the fight that let Ward wrestle. The money wouldn’t be there for a Golovkin vs. Ward fight. Look at the pay-per-view numbers for the Ward vs. Sergey Kovalev fight. It reportedly brought in just 160K buys on HBO PPV, according to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports News. That’s not good. If Kovalev-Ward didn’t interest the boxing fans, then Golovkin vs. Ward likely wouldn’t either.
When asked if former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins would have beaten Golovkin in his prime, Smith said, “Definitely, 100 percent. Hopkins beats the [expletive] out of him. I’m not overly impressed with him [Golovkin]. I’m not. He has power, but I’m not overly impressed by him, not at all. I don’t know if Canelo beats him. I don’t know. I think Canelo definitely has a better body of work, and I think if I’m Canelo, you need me more than I need you. Canelo’s a star with or without Triple G. Right now, he’s [Golovkin] going overseas to get big names. He’s got to fight a welterweight. [Promoter] Lou Dibella, he’s got a middleweight, a little southpaw guy, [Avtandil] Khurtsidze or whatever. He’s tough. He never mentions his name. It’s just crazy [expletive] he gets away with, man. Like I said, I’m not impressed like everyone else, because I’m more of a ‘show me’ than just seeing you knockout all those guys. Show me what you can do against the tough top guys. I’ve fought better guys than this dude. You can go over my body of work. I fought Vanes [Martirosyan], [Erislandy] Lara, K-9 [Cornelius Bundrage], [Carlos] Molina. Win, lose or draw, I’ve got the better resume on my record. What would I have done if I said, ‘Let me fight at 147. I could have fought 147 pounders. That [expletive] is crazy to me, man. That [expletive] he gets away with is crazy, because if you can’t get them at your weight, then move up. That’s what [Andre] Ward did. Ward went up. If you can’t get the fights at your weight, move up. We don’t go down to fight welterweights. We don’t make welterweights come up to 160 to fight, man. That don’t happen. I you can’t get those…there’s a lot of good names at 168. You’ve got 168. You’ve got James DeGale. I’d respect you more if you moved up. If you’re making little [expletive] guys come up and fight you. That’s crazy to me. I don’t know if he gets it. Canelo Alvarez already gave up his belt. I don’t know if he gets it. I make him [Golovkin] make every sacrifice possible to make that fight. If I want you to fight at 155, you fight at 155. If I want you at 154 ½, then you fight at 154 ½. I’m the star. You need me. I don’t need you. Canelo can fight anybody. The only thing I don’t like what Canelo did is he talked all that trash after his fight [with Amir Khan]. ‘We don’t mess around. Make the fight.’ I don’t like the position he made with that, and then didn’t fight. That’s the only problem. All the way up to that, I rode with him. You make him make 155. You’re the man, You’re the star. I don’t like him doing that, because now it makes you look bad when you throw away the belt and don’t fight him. I don’t know if it’s the promotions, but as a fighter, you can’t say those kinds of things and not back it up. He shouldn’t have taken that position and make those comments,” said Smith about Canelo.
There’s a chance that Golovkin and Canelo will fight each other in 2017. I think Canelo is going to need to take the fight with Golovkin whether he wants to or not. With Canelo moving up to 160, he’s going to be facing challenges from guys that could give him problems. If Canelo gets beaten by one of the normal middleweight contenders, he won’t be able to cash in like he would if he fought Golovkin and got a big payday against him. For that reason, it’s better that Canelo get the big payday against Golovkin before someone else beats him. You can argue that Canelo has already been beaten three times in fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr., Austin Trout and Erislandy Lara. It’s only a matter of time before someone else beats him. It won’t take Golovkin to do it either. I think Canelo is too flawed to go far without getting beaten by someone.