Gennady Golovkin trainer Abel Sanchez spoke with Radio Rahim of SecondsOut and discussed his fighter’s future in the middleweight division, how he sees 2015 shaking out and how he thinks Golovkin would handle moving up to 168lbs in the future.
Gennady Golovkin is running through all available opponents in the 160lb weight class and with Peter Quillin’s most recent draw against Andy Lee, it seems that his pool of quality opponents has gotten even smaller. When that happens, the tendency of the public is to expect the fighter to move up and chase stiffer competition above his weight division and Golovkin has not been able to escape such demands.
Whenever someone wants to discredit Golovkin, they bring up Andre Ward’s name. Unfair or not, the cries for Golovkin to move up to 168lbs will only become louder as the middleweight division continues to fail to produce quality opponents for Gennady Golovkin.
Although he prefers his fighter to stay at 160lbs and continue to clean out the middleweight division, Abel Sanchez insists that Golovkin would not have to change very much to move up to the 168lb weight class.
“Actually, he wouldn’t put on weight. He’s weighing 165, 166 in the gym right now. When he came to camp he was 170. So the way that he loses weight coming into camp is that he starts to watch what he eats… limit what he eats… so it would be a point of not watching what he eats. Just continue to have the steaks that he does every day… he loves steaks…”
Sanchez continued…
“If we fought anyone at 168, lets just say, he’d be coming into the fight at 171.”
As someone who opposes unhealthy efforts to shed weight, I like the sound of that but before we get too far ahead of ourselves, there is still unfinished business on the table. Specifically, current WBC middleweight champion of the world, Miguel Cotto.
Sanchez was asked what he would like to see for Golovkin that would make 2015 a success and he hopes to see 2015 end the way he was hoping it would begin…
“[Miguel Cotto] would be the fight, I think that the public has been clamoring for and I think it’d be a great big fight here in New York. I think it’s probably bigger than The Garden… that would be the fight to cap the year and if that was the fight, I don’t think that we’d fight four times… that would be the last fight of the year.”
I’m still skeptical that Miguel Cotto will take this fight… ever. I’m not going to fault Gennady Golovkin or Abel Sanchez if it doesn’t happen. Golovkin is fighting at his natural weight and he’s taking on any and all comers and destroying them. If Cotto decides that he would rather drop the belt instead of getting into the ring with Golovkin, as far as I am concerned, that is as good as making Cotto quit on his stool. Let’s just hope that isn’t the case and we get the fights that we want over the next 12 months or so.
