By Edward Chaykovsky
John David Jackson, trainer of WBO/IBF/WBA light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev, says Floyd Mayweather Jr. should forget about a super-fight Manny Pacquiao and instead pursue a real dangerous challenge, by facing WBA/IBO/WBC-interim middleweight champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin. Mayweather is the WBC/WBA champion at welterweight and junior middleweight.
Jackson wants to see Mayweather replicate the actions of Bernard Hopkins, who at 49-years-old accepted a dangerous challenge by stepping in the ring with Kovalev last Saturday night.
"Listen, I hate to say it, but don’t fight Manny, fight Golovkin, he’s a little bit bigger. It’s like Bernard fighting Sergey, let Floyd fight Golovkin. One thing about Golovkin is he’s coming right at you, he’s coming to knock your head off, he’s not afraid of you. He’s just like Sergey, he’s coming right at you to knock your head off," Jackson told On The Ropes Boxing Radio.
"It would test two things, how much Floyd really has left and can he keep the younger man off of him with his defensive skills? Offensively I don’t think he would be able to keep the kid off of him because he doesn’t punch hard enough, especially at middleweight."
"I’m not calling Floyd out and saying, “Fight him,” I’m just saying that’s in an ideal world, that’s a fight that the fans really want to see to see how much Floyd really has left and how great he truly is. It’s not so much Manny, Golovkin would be the guy that would test him at this stage in his career because Manny was a couple of years back. That fight is not really exciting; it doesn’t have the luster it once had."