Sanchez: Stripping Golovkin for a guy with 12 fights makes no sense!

In an interview with Marcos Villegas of Fight Hub TV, Gennady Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez talks about the current state of Canelo-Golovkin negotiations and what his team made of the IBF stripping Golovkin for his failure to agree in writing to face mandatory challenger Sergey Derevyanchenko.

On the status of Canelo-GGG talks following Golovkin conceding on the purse split:

“I don’t know. I talked to Tom [Loeffler] this afternoon, they’re still talking — him and Eric [Gomez] and Oscar [De La Hoya] are still talking and maybe it’s salvageable. I don’t know. I’d have to talk to Tom tomorrow.”

On the IBF stripping Golovkin of his world title:

“It’s unfortunate that, uh, one of the better champions of this era gets stripped. I think that the organizations have to have more consideration for these guys that are trying to create history, as Terence [Crawford] did in unifying his division, as Evander Holyfield, as Bernard Hopkins. There’s gotta be a little leniency to protect our sport, to protect our sport for these guys that are trying to create something that 20 years from now we’re gonna talk about.

“And to strip him for a guy, for a mandatory of a guy that’s got 12 or whatever fights he’s got — and his last fight was an 8-round fight against a guy [with a 22-23 record] — just makes no sense. We weren’t even given an option to say we were gonna fight him or not, and they just stripped him, which is — I don’t think they’ve ever done that before.”

On if he believes Golovkin will ultimately fight Canelo:

“You know, I sure hope so. I think boxing needs that fight but they were so far apart two weeks ago, they seem to get closer — Oscar said he was close to finalizing it with Tom — and then the next day it’s so far apart again, so, who knows?…If it gets made we get back in the gym, we train, and we fight the fight.

“I hope so for the fans. I hope so for boxing. But if it doesn’t get made I’m sure it’ll get made next year.”