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GGG trainer says no catchweight for Canelo fight
- Updated: April 25, 2016
6:20 PM ET
INGLEWOOD, Calif. — About an hour after Gennady Golovkin tore through overmatched mandatory challenger Dominic Wade, whom he knocked down three times and out in the second round of a devastating performance to retain his unified middleweight world title on Saturday night at the sold-out Forum, trainer Abel Sanchez found himself surrounded by reporters following the formal post-fight news conference.
And Sanchez did not hold his tongue when the topic quickly turned to the one fight the boxing world is demanding, a unification showdown between Golovkin and lineal champion Canelo Alvarez.
One of the main sticking points to making the match is Alvarez’s insistence that his opponents fight him at 155 pounds, one over the junior middleweight limit and five less than the middleweight limit. Alvarez claims not to be a true middleweight — even though he is the middleweight champion, and many have derisively referred to 155 pounds as a new weight division called “Canelo weight.”
Sanchez, no fan of catch weight fights for world titles, said Golovkin would never agree to fight Alvarez at anything less than 160 pounds, “not even an ounce.”
“Why would he give in to a diva,” Sanchez said. “Why would he give in to someone who’s trying to change boxing? 155 is not a division. We have 17 divisions in boxing I believe. Why would we need any more? He’s not going to bow down to a diva. It’s not the Canelo title. It’s the middleweight title, which is 160 pounds. With Gennady it’s the principle.”
Even if the sides could agree on the weight, Alvarez and Golden Boy’s Oscar De La Hoya, his promoter, do not sound in any hurry to make the fight for the fall — even though it has been mandated by the WBC because Alvarez has its title and Golovkin, along with his two other major titles, also owns the WBC’s interim belt and, therefore, is Alvarez’s mandatory challenger.
At the request of Alvarez and De La Hoya, the sides agreed to take interim fights this spring and put their showdown off until September. So Golovkin smashed Wade in a mandatory fight …
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