By Rick Reeno
The anticipation is quickly building for a potential match between two of the most dominant fighters in the sport, WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward (27-0, 14KOs) and IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (29-0, 26KOs). Both fighters are being showcased on HBO, and the network is very interested in televising a high profile fight between the two unbeaten champions.
Virgil Hunter, trainer of Ward, praises Golovkin for doing exactly what everyone expects him to do in the ring.
"I give the kid credit. The guys he is fighting, he's supposed to knock them out and he's doing that. I give him all the credit in the world. The bottom line is, one day we hope to fight him and then he'll come into the reality of things. But until then my hat goes off to them," Hunter told BoxingScene.com.
However, Hunter is not overly impressed with Golovkin's level of opposition. In a recent BoxingScene interview, Golovkin's trainer Abel Sanchez said his boxer was open to the idea of facing Ward - but only when Ward's team was going to negotiate with them on "equal terms."
Hunter, as he broke down the professional achievements of both men, explained exactly why he believes the two undefeated Olympians are not standing on equal footing.
"I don't think Adama would go a full fight with us. I don't think Rosado would go a full fight us, and I don't think Macklin would go the distance with us. The thing is, Gennady has 29 fights....we went against the best in the world, not pretenders or contenders, but the best in the world at 20 fights. We came into the Super Six with 20 fights, against Mikkel Kessler, Arthur Abraham, Carl Froch," Hunter said.
"At one time, and you have to remember, Andre was 17-0 with 12 or 13 knockouts and everyone thought he was a puncher. But then he went into the A-league. Even at 18-0, he fought Edison Miranda when he was still a very dangerous man. He then had an injury and took a tuneup, and then went right into a fight with Kessler. I think if you look back at Gennady, at who he was fighting at 18 fights [Milton Nunez], I think we'd have a KO too. I think whoever he fought in his last fight, we'd have a KO. But we went to Mikkel Kessler, we went to Abraham, we went to Froch, to Sakio Bika. We went into the A-league, so really there is no comparison."
"The question is? Can he maintain that [knockout streak] against the A-league? But, I don't consider the middleweight division a strong division at all. When Andre was in the super middleweight division, at 18-0, it was murderer's row. At middleweight, nobody has fought anybody there [a reference to how none of the four champions have fought each other]."