By Edward Chaykovsky

In the past, Abel Sanchez has stated in dozens of interviews that middleweight king Gennady Golovkin would only come down to the junior middleweight limit for a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. - who held the WBC/WBA world titles at the weight. Sanchez and Golovkin refused to fight Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez at anything lower than the middleweight limit of 160.

Well, there is another superstar fighter he would consider coming down for - eight division world champion Manny Pacquiao, who returns on Saturday night with a showdown against WBO welterweight champion Jessie Vargas at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas.

Of course Sanchez was reacting to some recent statements from Pacquiao's promoter, Bob Arum of Top Rank, who made an obvious joke that he would match his fighter against Golovkin - but some reporters, who were not on the conference call to hear Arum laughing as he said it, took the comments seriously.

If Arum ever decides to go in that direction, Sanchez would be on board with making that at 154-pounds but not a pound lower.

"If [Arum is] honestly talking about that and it’s something that can be done and Manny is agreeing to that - and Golovkin’s people agree to that.... who knows?," Sanchez told ES News.

"I think Manny would deserve [Golovkin going to 154] too, not because we’re greater [than him]. Manny deserves that because the history of.... he’s great. He’s a Hall of Famer [and] you bow down to that and do what’s necessary. I don't think less than 154 is possible, but 154 is a weight that could be done. There is no way that would I suggest getting him any lower than that."

If that fight would every happen, Sanchez would be concerned with Pacquiao's speed - in the same manner that he was concerned with the speed of Kell Brook, who moved from welterweight to face Golovkin in September. Brook was stopped in five rounds.

"[I would be worried about] speed, as you saw with Brook. I've always said that when a lighter fighter moves up, the bigger fighter is not used to seeing that speed. Until he assimilates the speed and gets used to the speed, you will get hit. And Manny is even faster than Brook and even sharper than Brook," Sanchez said.

 Of course, Arum was clear that he'd never match Pacquiao with Golovkin.

"That was a joke. They were asking what was the toughest fight for Manny or something like that, and I was going to say [Wladimir] Klitschko and show it was a joke, but Klitschko is no longer the heavyweight champ so I switched to Golovkin. Of course we would never make that fight. Manny Pacquiao is barely a 140-pounder," Arum explained to BoxingScene.com.

"It's silly. People who cover the sport should know when something is not serious. The idea of Pacquiao fighting Golovkin, a commission would step in and not allow it. It's ridiculous. And the fact that people couldn't take a joke..... But see if they weren't on the call. So if they weren't on the call they couldn't hear how I said it, as a joke. So they just read the [conference call] transcript and if they just read the transcript they think it was a serious comment. It was never intended as anything serious."