Abel Sanchez has quietly gone about his career as a trainer, gradually becoming recognized as one of the best trainers in world boxing. Sanchez, who trains his fighters at The Summit gym in California has many previous world champions including; Terry Norris, Carlos Manuel Baldomir, Miguel Angel Gonzalez and Samuel Peter. Abel’s extensive stable includes no other than IBO, WBA Super and WBC interim middleweight world champion, Gennady Golovkin. I had the good fortune to talk to Abel this week, where we spoke about Gennady Golovkin and who he would like train.
Adam Noble-Forcey: You’ve been working with Gennady Golovkin for a long time now. With constant speculation regarding who he will fight next, who would you like to see Gennady fight next?
Abel Sanchez: You know, I’ve been with him for five years now. I would obviously like to see him fight one of the bigger names, but that remains to be seen as far as Miguel Cotto is concerned because he is the middleweight champion (WBC) and Gennady Golovkin’s goal is to unify the titles.
Gennady is the mandatory and the interim champion, but it does not appear that Miguel Cotto wants anything to do with him. But that’s ok, we want to fight for the WBC middleweight title and if Cotto vacates we’ll go for that. Right now Tom Loeffler and his managers, the Herman brothers, are hard at work trying to find us an opponent. I hope it’s one of the bigger names, whomever they come up with we’ll be training and preparing for.
Adam Noble-Forcey: There has been much talk of Gennady Golovkin moving up to super middleweight to find a more lucrative challenge, what are your thoughts?
Abel Sanchez: I don’t know what they are doing in terms of finding a middleweight, but if he does move up, there has been talk of Carl Froch being interested in a fight with Gennady Golovkin, but I would have to wait to comment on any super middleweights until the Herman brothers and Tom Loeffler get their negotiations out the way and figure out who it is we are going to fight.
Adam Noble-Forcey: Can it be frustrating, not being able to match Gennady Golovkin competitively?
Abel Sanchez: No actually, it is not frustrating because Golovkin broke onto the HBO scene September 1st, 2012 so it hasn’t been that long. We have accomplished a lot in those three years. It’s just a case of bigger fights coming along. As long as he stays busy he won’t get frustrated.
Adam Noble-Forcey: If you could work with any fighters, who would they be?
Abel Sanchez: Other than the guys I’m working with. I would say Floyd Mayweather Jr would be a coaches dream because of his work ethic. I don’t particularly like the way he goes about his fights because I think he has a lot more talent than that.
There is a young man named Vasyl Lomachenko at featherweight who I think will go very far. I think he will do well because of his work ethic and how hard his father drives him. Those are the kind of guys I like to work with because they are willing to put the work in to be great. Not just successful, great! In this business there are only so many spots for the great ones.
Adam Noble-Forcey: If you trained Floyd Mayweather would you like to see him be more aggressive and in the ring?
Abel Sanchez: I think his talent is limitless. I think he is such a talented fighter that if he put in a bit more effort, he could be getting those guys out, a little more aggressive I should say. But he is limitless as far as talent is concerned. Obviously you have to consider his age to, maybe that is why he’s not got as much aggression as he used to in the past. But he is such an unbelievable fighter, such a smart fighter.
(Click play to hear the Abel Sanchez interview in its entirety)
Floyd is a smart and coward fighter. Tremendous talent, but a shame to boxing, he doesn’t want to engage, he ran like a gay rooster chased by a stag ready to hand him a good beating. Floyd is not great, and be remembered as an undefeated cowardice and shameful to boxing. Look at GGG’s and Roman Gonzales fights and you can see that Floyd is not in their caliber. What a shame!
Floyd is a coach’s dream fighter,what a joke…
Coach’s nightmare he should say, totally uncoachable!
Smart move by Cotto to stay away from GGG.
Look at all Cotto’s Ws after his loss to Pacquiao, they were all against one-legged or unskilled or washed-up LADIES.