Two undefeated world champions went face-to-face for the first time in New York. Watch the Gennady Golovkin v Kell Brook press conference.
Much has been made of IBF world welterweight champion Brook accepting the challenge of leaping up two divisions to face middleweight king Golovkin, who holds the WBA Super, WBC and IBF belts.
The pair boast flawless records with Brook 36-0-KO25 and Golovkin 35-0-KO32 - combining for a staggering 71 victories and 57 stoppages.
At The O2 on September 10, Brook has the big fight he's always wanted even if many feel it's literally too big. Can he avoid those heavy hands for long enough to register himself and upset the Kazakh? The world can't wait to find out.
So with the fight less than two months away, the two met in New York for their opening press conference. Did the insults fly or was there an instant mutual respect?
Coach talks Pacquiao vs. Canelo fight
Trainer Freddie Roach says he has no fear of his fighter Manny Pacquiao taking on middleweight Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Roach’s main concern in a fight between these two stars is there would need to be a rehydration limit to keep the 25-year-old Canelo from rehydrating 30 pounds after they weigh-in the day before the fight.
Roach’s been vocal about his belief that Canelo rehydrated 30 pounds last November after making weight for his fight against Roach’s fighter Miguel Cotto. Canelo weighed in at 155lbs for the fight, but then on fight night, he looked huge compared to Cotto, who was around 164.
Canelo looked a lot more than 10 pounds heavier than Cotto in that fight, which means that he would have had to have rehydrated into the 180s on fight night. Roach thinks Canelo was at 185lbs in the fight. Cotto was so much smaller than his shots literally bounced off the tank-like Canelo without slowing him up for even a second.
“Canelo, I mean, I have no fear about Manny fighting him,” said Roach to Fighthype.com. “There’s got to be a limit of how much he can gain. From the official weigh-in to getting in the ring, we got to have a catch-weight somewhere where he can’t gain 30 pounds. That’s too much of an advantage. Manny is a very small 147 pounder,” said Roach.
Pacquiao plans on returning to the ring on October 29 or November 5 on HBO pay-per-view. It’s not going to be possible for Pacquiao to fight Canelo on either of those days because Canelo has a fight scheduled against WBO light middleweight champion Liam Smith on September 17. Canelo wants to fight in December, but it’s unclear that date would work for Pacquiao and more importantly his promoter Bob Arum, who might want to stick the Filipino star in with one of his Top Rank fighters rather than someone outside of his promotional company.
It’s doubtful that Arum will let Pacquiao fight a huge middleweight like Canelo, because I think he 84-year-old promoter wants to take advantage of the last two or three fights remaining in the Filipino star’s career by matching him against his own guys from Top Rank. This means that instead of Arum putting Pacquiao in with Canelo to make huge money, we’ll likely see Pacquiao fight Top Rank guys like Terence Crawford and Jessie Vargas in order to increase their value to his company. I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw Pacquiao fight Crawford two or three times before he retires. I don’t think it’s going to turn Crawford into a star though, because Pacquiao is too old now to turn anyone into a star. The window to turn Crawford into a star from fighting Pacquiao is long past. If Arum could have made the fight when Pacquiao was in his prime in 2009, then maybe it would have turned Crawford into a star. Right now, it’ll just look like a younger guy beating an old timer on his last legs.