By Edward Chaykovsky
K2 Promotions' Tom Loeffler, who promotes WBC, WBA, IBF, IBO middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33KOs), disputes some of the recent statements that were made by WBA, IBF, WBO light heavyweight champion Andre Ward (31-0, 15KOs).
During Ward's appearance on TMZ Live, he was questioned about the possibility of a catch-weight fight with Golovkin. Ward explained the situation that transpired during their most recent discussions - where he claims Golovkin's team was not willing to do the fight before 2018.
According to Ward, once they gave him their answer, he made his decision to move up in weight to 175-pounds to face Sergey Kovalev. The Kovalev fight took place two weeks ago, with Ward winning a close twelve round unanimous decision.
Ward is still open to the idea of doing that fight, if Golovkin heads up in weight to 175-pounds.
"I think the fight with Golovkin should have happened before the Kovalev fight. That fight was talked about, our teams had some correspondence, and it just didn't work out. I'm not here to expose them or throw them under the bus or nothing like that. But I will be honest with the fans because there is a lot of confusion out there. They didn't want the fight," Ward explained.
"And when they didn't want the fight, most people would have took that email that I had [with their answer] and put it online, put them on blast - because they were saying the opposite of what that email said. They flipped it and said that we were ducking and dodging. If you read the email it was clear... we gave them a 50-50 split so there wouldn't be any arguments. We said let's get it on and each fighter would get a tune-up fight, similar to what me and Kovalev did, and then lets get it on right after."
"This was probably in early 2016. They were talking about him unifying the titles and maybe [the fight can happen] in 2018. That's not something we were willing to do, so right after we got off the phone with them - I made the decision to move up and fight Kovalev. Partially I don't see that fight happening because he's at middleweight and I'm at light heavyweight. But if he wants to come up and take that kind of challenge, I think it would be a tremendous fight that the fans would want to see."
Loeffler has a much different recollection of the discussions that were held with Ward's team.
“I don’t know where he got 2018 from,” Loeffler said to the Los Angeles Times. “I told him [in 2015] that we had obligations for 2016 and once we did that, a fight with Ward would be realistic. No one could’ve predicted Canelo would then vacate his [WBC] belt or that [Billy Joe] Saunders, despite a very strong offer from us, would decide to do something else.”
"Ward is now two divisions ahead of Gennady. We also never said we wouldn’t fight him at 168 [pounds]."
Loeffler also stated that a fight between Golovkin and Ward would be completely sold out - a reference to the empty seats that were visible for Ward's fight with Kovalev at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Not taking anything away from Kovalev, but if [Ward] fights Gennady, it’d be sold out,” Loeffler said.
