"Kovalev was afraid of Golovkin"

[Humean]

Abel Sanchez did. He was down for Golovkin fighting Hopkins.

In the build up to the Cloud fight, i'm not sure he was being serious and Sanchez is the trainer and not the manager/promoter of Golovkin. Having said that i'm sure if the money was good he'd fight at 175. If you gave him $50 million i'm sure he'd fight Wlad Klitschko! As would I.

[B-Bomber]

Golovkin surely has power, but sparring is sparring.

Spadafora was beating Mayweather, wasn't he?

Most of the times the main factor in these sparring events is conditioning.

Any fighter going back to the gym after a lay off will look much worse than a guy that has a fight in two weeks.

[JoeKidd]

How do you know he wasn't simply afraid to let his power loose on the smaller man? Tough for power-punching big guys to spar smaller guys.