why was ggg so scared to move up/down a weight class

He could whoop anybody from 154lbs to 168lbs but he was a natural middleweight.

 

IIRC it was Abel Sanchez and others that mentioned GGG beating folks up to 175, NOT Gennady himself.

Whether he should or shouldn't have is up to others to determine, but I feel the modern game puts too much emphasis on division-hopping as 'Daring to be Great', when in many cases it's calculated belt-grabs for A-sides to enhance their legacy, rather than try and clean out a division. Whilst I know that 168 didn't exist then, no one castigates Hagler for not trying to move to 175 - on the contrary, much of his legacy comes from his titanic encounters with smaller ATG fighters coming up...

My perception and recollection was that GGG was always trying to get undisputed @160lb, but politics, ducking and the like got in his way, and then when he finally managed to get Canelo in the ring a 160lb, vegas corruption killed that dream dead.

His legacy would have been viewed much differently if he had been correctly given the decision against Canelo and went on to get Undisputed.

One thing that I can't fathom is why Canelo didn't clean up 160 first before moving to 168? Getting undisputed at 160 THEN 168 would have been a sick achievement regardless of how it came about.

 

Making good money and creating a legacy fighting bums in a weak division

 

This. Although I do think Canelo ducked him in his prime. But with that said, he was crushing absolute cans. And the hype on this forum and in the boxing community at large was outrageous. Dude was crushing cans. And people like Kellerman were saying he was the greatest show in sports. For busting cans!

Ironic thing is that in 2019 Artur Beterbiev KOed a prime Gvozdyk in a unification match and then absolutely nobody cared. The hype that GGG got should have gone to Artur.

 

He fought at middleweight because he was a middleweight. He weighed about 170 lbs. It's really that simple

 

Why are you assuming he was scared? He had a great run and will go down as a great within his weight class……. Worth mentioning he fought several very dangerous punchers that scared fighters probably wouldn’t have fought..

 

I don't think he was scared, I think he was just a natural MW & thats where his body felt it needed to be.. what's wrong with that? Go to SMW & what? Dick about with billy goat Ward who does more hugging & stacking the deck than Klitschko... & no one cares about 154.. there are many fights that escaped prime Golovkin.. Pirog, Cotto, Martinez etc.. this one is used a lot of the times as to why he should have left MW.. but theres no guarantees Froch or Ward would have fought him either..

 

Cotto was washed at that point and was smashed to bits by a blown up Featherweight. Absolutely thrashed in his prime by a tiny 5'4" Asian dude. What did GGG have to gain by crushing Cotto?

 

Maybe it's a clue he actually wasn't a roider.
154 was only for Mayweather, that was clear. Mayweather wouldn't fight.
168 was really for Ward and (old) Froch. It's not clear exactly what happened there. It's likely at least one of these two didn't want the fight. People like to rewrite things now but at the time GGG was like Beterbiev in terms of the fear around fighting him.

You're actually a fool boxing above your weight class, especially when you already aren't huge in your own class. You'll end up like Loma, losing to clowns like Lopez and Haney, then having everyone diminish your record. Nobody cares about 'challenging yourself' in the end.

Lots of them only move up around that weight because they're massive drainers or can't make the weight, it's not because they decided to challenge themselves after watching a TEDtalk. For example, Callum Smith, Badou jack, even Ward, were very big SMWs and that's why they went to 175. When Groves, [who was a big smw, heavier than Froch] is saying Jack was huge, that says it all. Jacobs was a huge MW. Others moved up because they were fat and lazy, like Saunders. Kovalev moved to cruiser because he couldn't make 175.

 

False,
He lost to canelo in the rubber match pretty soundly at 168lbs

 

GGG was busting cans also because he was avoided by the top names and there is no denying that. But you know what he also did ? He was ACTIVE and that's the golden ticket. If you forget his first 2 pro years, Beterbiev fought 1.4x a year since 2015. He is not marketing himself, he's kinda boring and he doesn't keep momentum at all. After he won vs Gvozdyk, he disappeared for a 1 1/2 year. He is prone to injuries and fight gets canceled or postponed, and because he's muslim he doesn't fight during ramadan, so that's another chunk of year he takes off.

 

I think all he wanted was the canelo fight so he just stayed at middleweight and waited till he got the shot

 

I cannot imagine a "scared" GGG. Does not compute.