by David P. Greisman

Gennady Golovkin’s time as a middleweight titleholder has seen him ascending at 160 while his team has also thrown out names at 154 and 168 that he would be willing to face. Such a move hasn’t happened yet, and Golovkin has been aiming for the other titleholders at middleweight.

Still, Golovkin’s trainer feels that there are at least a couple of names who would merit an immediate jump up or move down.

“For Gennady, his dream match is [Floyd] Mayweather,” said trainer Abel Sanchez. If “Mayweather gets through unscathed on the 2nd [of May against Manny Pacquiao at welterweight] and he decides to move up, Gennady is willing to come down to ’54 and meet him.”

And then there’s the idea of Carl Froch at super middleweight.

“I think Froch in England would be ideal for us,” Sanchez said. “He represents a lot of good things as far as what he’s done in the past. For Gennady, that’s a good step.”

Andre Ward is the champion at 168. Golovkin’s promoter, Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions, said that Ward’s promoter, Roc Nation, has approached them about a future collision.

“They made it clear that they wanted to have a couple comeback fights,” Loeffler said, referencing Ward’s comeback bout on June 20 against Paul Smith after a layoff of more than a year and a half due to litigation against his now-deceased former promoter, Dan Goossen.

“If Roc Nation can get him back to where he was in the sport, then that becomes a big fight. There’s no reason not to fight Andre Ward. It’s just that he’s been out of the ring,” Loeffler said. “When people ask him [Ward] would he fight Gennady, and when people ask Abel or Gennady if they’d fight Andre Ward, they say yes. It’s just making the financials work. So far Andre hasn’t really brought the same amount of money that Gennady brings right now. If he kind of gets back in the swing of things, his popularity gets back up there, then there’s no reason not to make that fight.”

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