Ward vs. Golovkin is an option after Canelo fight says Loeffler

Boxingnews24.com

By Allan Fox: If Gennady Golovkin can beat Saul Canelo Alvarez, a fight against Andre Ward at 168 is a fight that his promoter Tom Loeffler says he would be interested in doing. Golovkin would move up to super middleweight to make the fight happen. Loeffler says Ward has to get past Sergey Kovalev in their rematch and then move down in weight to 168. Golovkin isn’t going to move up to 175 to accommodate Ward, and he likely won’t agree to a catch-weight at 172 either.

Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter said he would come down to 168 to fight Golovkin if he moves up to super middleweight. Hunter would like to make that fight happen.

The unbeaten Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) could be 2 fights away from moving up to 168, after he potentially fights Billy Joe Saunders and Canelo. Golovkin would obviously need to beat both of those fighters for a fight against Ward (31-0, 15 KOs) to make sense. It won’t mean much if Golovkin gets beaten by one or both of those guys before deciding to move up to 168 to seek greener pastures.

“We’ve always said that Golovkin could move up to 168 if it made sense,” said Loeffler to secondsout.com. “We tried to make the Chavez Jr. fight. We tried to make the Froch fight. Now [Gilberto] Ramirez is talking about fighting Triple G. He’s undefeated; he’s a 168 pound champion. Andre Ward, if he beats Kovalev; he’s got the Kovalev rematch. If he can win that fight and come back down to 168, I think it’s a good fight,” said Loeffler about Andre Ward fighting Golovkin. “When they were originally talking about fighting Golovkin, that’s when we had the Lemieux fight. We had the Cotto-Canelo winner within our sights. My response was if we had Andre at 168, I think we can make that fight. That’s a tremendous match-up now that Andre’s active again. If Gennady beats Canelo, that makes the fight that much more interesting. I think with the win over Danny Jacobs, it opens up a lot of doors; whether it’s against Saunders, whether it’s against Canelo, whether it’s against Ramirez, whether it’s against Ward. Whatever happens in his fight, a lot of doors are open that previously weren’t open, because people didn’t want to get inside the ring with Gennady” said Loeffler.

It would be a size mismatch for Ward to be fighting Golovkin. Daniel Jacobs was rumored to be around 180 on the night of the fight against Golovkin on March 18. There’s no telling how heavy Ward would be. If makes 168, he could rehydrate well above that, and leaving Golovkin having to deal with a potential 20 pound weight disadvantage. Golovkin is a great fighter, but I don’t think he’ll be able to beat someone that is 20 lbs. heavier than him. Golovkin would have problems against other top light heavyweights as well based on their size advantage. Golovkin is a small a small middleweight. There are a lot of junior middleweights that weigh the same as Golovkin, and they chose to fight in the 154 lb. division. Golovkin fight at junior middleweight as well if he wanted to, but he chooses not to.

If Ward wins another decision over Kovalev like the last one he had, I don’t know if it would be a good idea for Golovkin to fight him next. There might not be a great deal of interest in a Golovkin-Ward fight if Ward wins another questionable decision. If Ward looks great in beating Kovalev, then it makes a lot of sense for Golovkin to fight him. But if he comes into the fight off the back of another ugly decision win in which he appeared to lose in the minds of many boxing fans, then Golovkin might be better off steering clear of him.

There are a lot of questions whether Ward can beat Kovalev. Ward didn’t match-up well at all with the Russian fighter in their fight last November. The only thing Ward could do was grab Kovalev on the inside, and turn the fight into a wrestling match for the last 10 rounds. That wasn’t boxing. That was stand up wrestling from what I could see. The referee was there, but not taking control over the fight to turn it back into a boxing match. If Ward does the same thing again in the rematch, then it’s going to be up to the 3 judges whether they see that worthy giving Ward rounds. I couldn’t give him rounds for wrestling.

I thought Kovalev got the better of Ward when it actual fighting. It was a type of fight where the fans were evenly split afterwards in who they felt won the fight. The judges would have made most boxing fans happy if they scored the fight a draw instead of a win for Ward.

“We have to see what happens with his rematch with Kovalev,” said Loeffler. “Ramirez is fighting in April, and Bob [Arum] been very proactive in trying to make the fight. I think that’s a great fight. We’ve always wanted to go to Texas with Gennady. If we could do a fight with Ramirez in Texas, that’s a tremendous match-up. We’ll have to see what the options are,” said Loeffler.