By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – While noting that Gennady Golovkin would fight the Miguel Cotto-Canelo Alvarez winner only if it is contested at the middleweight limit of 160 pounds, Golovkin’s promoter reiterated that there’s only one fight for which the Kazakh knockout artist would move down in weight.
“Him and [trainer] Abel [Sanchez] both have gone on record – the only fight he’ll go down in weight [for], to 154 pounds, is against Floyd, because he’s got two belts at 154,” Tom Loeffler, managing director of K2 Promotions, said earlier this week before a press conference at Madison Square Garden. “Other than that, he’s the middleweight champion. They’re middleweight champions. If it’s a unification fight, it’d be at 160 pounds.”
Loeffler also said he hasn’t had official discussions with anyone from Mayweather’s camp regarding a potential Mayweather-Golovkin fight and emphasized that Golovkin isn’t calling out boxing’s biggest star, who typically fights two weight classes below the division in which Golovkin owns the interim WBC middleweight title and the WBA’s “super” middleweight championship.
Mayweather is the WBC champion at 154 pounds and the WBA “super” champion at that weight, but hasn’t boxed above welterweight since he defeated Alvarez (45-1-1, 32 KOs) by majority decision in September 2013. The maximum allowable weight for the Mayweather-Alvarez fight was 152 pounds. Alvarez weighed in at 152 for that fight, two pounds more than Mayweather.
“He’s not calling out Floyd,” Loeffler said of Golovkin. “It’s always like if someone asks him, ‘Would you fight Floyd?’ He says, ‘Sure,’ he would go down to 154 out of respect to what he’s accomplished. He would go down to 154, where he has two titles.”
The 38-year-old Mayweather (48-0, 26 KOs) has repeatedly stated that he’ll retire following his Sept. 12 welterweight championship match against Andre Berto (30-3, 23 KOs) at MGM Grand in Las Vegas (Showtime Pay-Per-View). The 33-year-old Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) is scheduled to meet Montreal’s David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) in a 12-round, middleweight title unification fight Oct. 17 at Madison Square Garden (HBO Pay-Per-View).
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.