Everyone says that nobody wanted to fight Golovkin when he was up and coming during the poor MW days in the early 2010s; but who actually ducked him/refused to fight him?
Martinez could have had the fight. Sturm could have had the fight. Mayweather could have had the fight. Canelo dropped a belt rather than face him. Cotto could have had the fight. Eubank could have had the fight. Saunders made it clear that prime GGG would whomp both him and Eubank on the same night. Ward could have had the fight. Chavez Jr was on the menu and went elsewhere. Froch could have had the fight. Off the top of my head.
Yeah, iirc he paid GGG step aside money to fight Canelo instead. Was there any chance of him fighting GGG if he had beaten Canelo? I doubt it but I seem to have read something along them lines.
Is could have had the fight ducking, though? At no point did it make sense for Martinez to fight GGG. He only had two fights between GGG being rated above #10, was injured for both of them, and obviously got paid way more to fight Cotto. It's similar for Sturm. He had losses to get revenge for and other than fighting Barker - which was for a title, when GGG only had the miserable, regular WBA - there wasn't really a point where he wasn't tied up with trying to fix his losses. Canelo fought him twice. Chavez Jr and Cotto probably did duck him tbh. Saunders said that as a prospect, though. He won his belt and immediately wanted the fight. GGG had a mandatory and got the Canelo fights. Depends on who you want to believe during the negotiations but they definitely happened and GGG chose different options; not Saunders. Eubank Jr accepted the fight and his dad absolutely ****ed up the negotiations by being a weirdo. I wouldn't call that a duck by Eubank in any way, just absolutely poor management from his team/dad. Froch was retired for a year; offered them the fight at 168 and GGG turned down what in 2015 would've been undoubtedly a career high pay day in a stadium fight at Wembley. How is this a duck by Froch? You can lay as much blame on GGG as Ward for their fight not happening. Given one went on to fight David Lemieux (despite saying Ward wasn't a draw), and the other fought Kovalev... I really doubt Ward was afraid of GGG. Why tf would Mayweather have fought GGG? Did Lomachenko duck GGG too?
It's complicated. But the guy making the concessions was always Golovkin, and when GGG finally agreed to the 168 weight that Ward was demanding for years, Ward declined to face him.
So that's a matter of opinion. For example, I can sort of get Martinez declining to face Golovkin. He had a limited amount of fights left and he needed to squeeze all the juice from that orange. I think it is universally accepted that GGG would have malleted end-of-the-road Martinez. Disagree. His promoter got a special belt made for him so he didn't have to fight Golovkin. Three times. But only when it was abundantly clear GGG was getting old. He dropped a belt rather than face him. Here is the actual story: https://www.*****.com/froch-ggg-wembley-duck-fixed-nose/ Ward wanted everything his own way. He wanted the fight at his weight and he wanted the purse split to be half despite the fact that he couldn't draw flies to ****. Eventually he got what he wanted and he still declined the fight. To me it is clear who was being the obstacle to making the fight. Mayweather talked a crazy amount of **** about Golovkin, saying how vanilla he was and how easy he would be to beat. When GGG offered to cut weight and meet Floyd at his own weight class, Mayweather swerved like hell. Seems like Berto was the legacy fight he'd been chasing ...
Honestly I get tired of the amount of excuses from GGG fans. I have nothing against GGG as a boxer he was a great not ATG IMO. But the way they carry on about the Canelo fights when objectively they were all very close fights. Then they make excuses for his resume saying every fighter known to man was avoiding him. It just gets tiresome honestly.
Every convo with a GGG fan about his resume eventually boils down to "yeah but dude GGG would absolutely beat that guy man, trust!!!" Cool, why didn't he do it to ANYBODY then?