In several recent interviews, former five division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. (50-0, 27 KOs) has continued to claim that a potential fight with middleweight king Gennady Golovkin would have been "easy work."
He felt Golovkin brought nothing to the table, so the contest was never seriously discussed. But Golovkin, on several occasions, made it clear that he was willing to squeeze himself down to the junior middleweight limit of 154-pounds for the contest. Mayweather has held the WBA, WBC belts at 154.
Mayweather, 40 years old, snapped a two year retirement last month and stopped UFC superstar Conor McGregor at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The fight took place at the junior middleweight of 154.
Golovkin, aged 35, returned to the same Las Vegas venue on September 16th, and went to twelve round draw with Saul "Canelo" Alvarez. Golovkin retained his WBA, WBC, IBO, IBF world titles with the verdict.
Before that fight had taken place, Mayweather made numerous predictions in favor of Canelo - expecting the Mexican fighter to win the bout by knockout and downplaying Golovkin as a robotic type of fighter with a big punch.
Mayweather dominated Canelo over twelve rounds back in 2013, but the Mexican superstar has become a much better fighter since that defeat. They are likely heading to a rematch in May of 2018.
Tom Loeffler, promoter for Golovkin, believes his fighter would have stopped Mayweather and he says Floyd also knew what would happen and that's why there were never any discussions to get the fight done.
"There were never serious talks. We can't blame Floyd because he was never in the [middleweight] division. If he was in the division it would be a different story but he's never fought at 160 pounds," Loeffler told Sky Sports.
"Floyd said it would be 'easy work' because GGG has 'no special effects' but realistically they know what the outcome would have been."
2023-10-19 15:14:29
