By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Beyond who’s the “A” side of the promotion and what the maximum allowable weight should be, Gennady Golovkin’s trainer has another doubt about a seemingly ill-fated fight against Andre Ward.
“Take it a step further,” Abel Sanchez told BoxingScene.com earlier this week before a press conference for the Golovkin-David Lemieux middleweight championship unification fight Oct. 17 at Madison Square Garden. “Let me ask you this – let’s just say we did fight Ward. Nobody wants to fight him now. When he beats Ward, what the hell do we do then? Who’s going to fight him? Klitschko?”
Ward’s last fight – a ninth-round stoppage of overmatched Brit Paul Smith (35-6, 20 KOs) on June 20 in Oakland, California – was contracted at a maximum catch weight of 172 pounds, which Smith exceeded by 4½ pounds at a weigh-in June 19. Tom Loeffler, managing director of the company, K2 Promotions, that represents Kazakhstan’s Golovkin, reiterated this week that a fight with Ward (28-0, 15 KOs) would need to be contested at a catch weight of 164 pounds, a stance that has drawn criticism because Ward has fought at super middleweight or higher since 2007 and Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) and his handlers have previously said he would move up to 168 pounds to get bigger fights.
That’s not what concerns Sanchez most, though.
“Again, if we happen to fight Ward and he destroys Ward, like I know he will, what do we do then?,” Sanchez said. “How do I know [he’ll destroy Ward]? Because I’ve seen it in the gym. I’ve seen it against guys that are very, very, very good. [Ward] wouldn’t be able to clinch. Heavyweights can’t clinch this guy. But the other thing is I’ve seen Ward get hurt that by guys that should not have hurt him. Darnell Boone for one. Darnell Boone’s a good puncher, but he’s a slug. He’s not on that level. For a guy [like Boone] to hurt you like that, that means something’s wrong here.”
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.