

Ward: Beating Golovkin Won’t ‘Catapult’ Me Past Floyd

By Ryan Maquiñana

Andre Ward will defend his world championship belts Nov. 16 on HBO against unbeaten Edwin Rodriguez in Ontario, Calif., but the chatter has already begun surrounding the identity of the super middleweight king’s next foe.

With the power-punching Gennady Golovkin (28-0, 25 KOs), Adonis Stevenson (22-1, 19 KOs) and Sergey Kovalev (22-0, 20 KOs) coming to the forefront, a win over Rodriguez (24-0, 16 KOs) could propel Ward into a matchup with one of these rising stars next year. However, Ward downplayed the talk.

“With all due respect, those guys got a lot of buzz right now, and they’re being pushed as the bogeyman in the division,” Ward (26-0, 14 KOs) said during a Thursday conference call. “(There's) Golovkin in the super middleweight division, Stevenson and Kovalev in the light heavyweight division, and that’s fine.”

Ward, considered by many the second-best pound-for-pound fighter in the world to Floyd Mayweather (45-0, 26 KOs), argued that beating the trio would not add to his already impressive cache—at least for the moment.

“I don’t see a win over either one of those guys right now catapulting me right now past a Floyd Mayweather or something like that,” Ward added. “But to be perfectly honest, that’s not even -- and I use this phrase a lot -- I’m eating, sleeping and drinking Edwin Rodriguez. Those guys are not even something that’s on my mind right now at all."

Ryan Maquiñana was the boxing producer for NBCOlympics.com during London 2012 and writes a weekly column for CSNBayArea.com. He is a full member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and the Ratings Panel for Ring Magazine. E-mail him at rmaquinana@gmail.com, check out his blog at Norcalboxing.net, or follow him on Twitter: @RMaq28.