Ward says he won’t fight Golovkin at 168

Boxingnews24.com

By Dan Ambrose: Andre Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) has ruled out entirely him moving back down to 168 to fight unbeaten Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) after he moves up to super middleweight. Ward says that it’s too hard to move back down in weight. He doesn’t want to put himself in that position where he has to lose weight to go back to his old division. However, Ward is still open to fighting Golovkin if he’s willing to move up to 175 to fight him.

(Photo Credit: Roc Nation Sports/Khristopher Sandifer)

That’s unlikely to happen, but you never know. If Golovkin wants the payday bad enough, he move choose to move up 7 pounds from 168 to fight Ward at 175 in the future. There are no big names for Golovkin to fight in the 168 lb. division right now. It’s possible that he may choose to move if he can’t get any worthwhile fights at 168.

“I’m not going to 68, that’s out,” said Ward to thaboxingvoice.com about him not moving down to 168 to fight Golovkin. “I moved up. That was a real opportunity for him to take that fight. He didn’t want the fight. He wanted to push it out 2 or 3 years. Once you go up, you can’t come back down. If he wants to come up, that’s another story. I’m not going back down,” said Ward.

Golovkin is popular enough right now to where he won’t have to bend over backwards to find suitable opponents. If this were a situation where Triple G wasn’t a big draw, then I could understand Ward asking him to come up all the way to 175 to fight him, but that’s not the situation. Golovkin can find other options for fights if Ward doesn’t want to meet him at the halfway point by coming down to 168.

It’s too bad that Ward isn’t willing to meet Golovkin halfway by fighting him at 168. Golovkin hasn’t moved up in weight to 168 yet. If Golovkin moved up 8 pounds to the super middleweight division, then it only makes sense for Ward to drop eight pounds so that he can Golokvin could meet in the middle. Ward sounds like he views himself as the A-side in a fight with Golovkin.

Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter was the one that said recently that he’d be willing to come back down to 168 to fight Golovkin once he moved up in weigh to super middleweight. Hunter sounded pretty confident that Ward would move back down to 168 to fight Golovkin. I guess Hunter spoke too soon though, because doesn’t seem at all interested in sacrificing weight to get back down to his old weight class to fight Golovkin.

Asking Golovkin, a small middleweight, to move up to 175 to fight him could be viewed by some boxing fans as a selfish move on Ward’s part. He’s not even offering Golovkin a catch-weight. For a guy that would already be moving up one division to fight at 168, it would be very hard on Golovkin to move up another division to fight Ward at 175. That would mean he would be moving up 2 divisions to take that fight. Ward fans would point out that Kell Brook moved up 2 divisions from welterweight to fight Golovkin last September.

So it should be fine for Golovkin to move up 2 divisions to fight Ward. In other words, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. It would be tougher for Golovkin though, because he’s small for a middleweight. At least with Brook, he was a very heavy welterweight, who arguably was more of a junior middleweight who melts down to fight at 147. Golovkin is same size as many junior middleweights in terms of weight. Golovkin could easily drop 16 pounds to fight at 154 and then rehydrate back up to 170 if he wanted to campaign as a junior middleweight.

At this point, Ward is basically saying he’ll never fight Golovkin. By saying that Golovkin has to move up all the way to 175 to fight him, it’s clear that the Ward-Golovkin fight will never take place. Ward doesn’t have much time left in his career anyway. He’s got “The Rematch” coming up on June 17 against former 175 lb. champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev on HBO PPV, and there’s a good chance that Ward will lose that fight.

Ward is talking like he’s got the victory in the bag, but if you saw the first fight, you’ll realize that he could very well lose to Kovalev – again. If Ward gets beaten, he’ll look to get the third fight. If Ward loses that one, I can’t see him sticking him continuing his boxing career.

Golovkin would be an option for Ward at that point if he were willing to drop weight to fight him. Ward would not be in the position to dictate the weights for the fight. Ward would need to swallow some humble pie and drop weight to face GGG at 168. If Ward stays at 175 after losing consecutive fights to Kovalev, he would be looking at with the difficult options of fighting the likes of Artur Beterbiev, Oleksandr Gvozyk and possibly Adonis Stevenson if he’s still around as the WBC champion.

Ward didn’t move up in weigh for his fight against Chad Dawson. He had Dawson move down to 168, and it seemed to really hurt him because he looked weight drained. Ward probably learned from that not to make the same mistake.

Golovkin has plenty of smaller fights if he moves up 168 to fight in that division. He might not need a match against Ward. Moving up in eight to 168 isn’t a great idea anyway for Golovkin, because he’s not big enough to fight in that weight class, and there’s no popular in that division other than Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. WBO champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez is someone who might become popular one of these days, but right now, he’s not. If Golovkin faces him, he’d be doing him and his promoters at Top Rank a big favor, because it would increase his popularity.

Golovkin could be facing either Billy Joe Saunders or Saul Canelo Alvarez in his next fight. If he fights Saunders, then he’ll be back in the ring on June 10. If it’s Canelo, then Golovkin won’t be back until September.