Steve Farhood: “I don’t know who would be considered the best fighter Golovkin’s fought but I know that he hasn’t fought a very high level of opponent”

Steve Farhood has been working in boxing for thirty seven years, and in that time he has seen many great fighters come into the sport and leave it when their careers are over. With Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao heading out the door, fans wonder who will carry the torch for the sport when both fighters are done with their careers.

In part 2 of my “On The Ropes” boxing radio interview with Steve Farhood, I discuss with him the future of the sport, discussing the final bout of Manny Pacquiao’s career and what opponent he should end his career with. I also get Steve’s thoughts on Gennady Golovkin’s rise and a possible Golovkin-Ward bout. Additionally, I get Farhood’s thoughts on the Premier Boxing Champions series and a Thurman vs. Porter match up. Here is what Steve Farhood had to say.

Jenna J: If Manny Pacquiao doesn’t fight Terence Crawford next, what do you think would be a good finale for Pacquiao to go out on?

Steve Farhood: Well that’s a good question. The temptation is to say Floyd, even though that’s not a fight a lot of the fans would want to see, but the fact of the matter is, they are going to make more money fighting each other again than they would against anybody else.

Maybe you could argue that Floyd could make a huge amount of money fighting Golovkin or the winner of Cotto-Canelo, but the fact of the matter is, when a fight does 4.4 million buys on pay-per-view, if you do one third of that next time, you’re still doing massive numbers. The whole thing with the shoulder injury, that would be part of the sell to the public.

There’s a new arena opening in the MGM and you need a brand new and sparkling event to open it, and that would seem to make sense. While we would rather see Pacquiao fight other people than Mayweather, economically that fight seems to still make sense.

Jenna J: Pacquiao was an import coming to the United States, he gained a lot of fame, sold out arenas. There’s another guy now, Gennady Golovkin, who is starting to do the same thing recently. What do you think of Golovkin’s rise?

Steve Farhood: I love Golovkin, how can you not love watching him fight? He has scored nothing but knockouts. It’s no surprise that he’s a brilliant fighter because he was a brilliant amateur and he had all the skills in the amateur games where power is much less important than it is in the pros. When you add those skills to the power that is natural to him, of course he’s a great fighter.

The problem with Golovkin is very simple, you’re not going to be considered an all time great, you’re not gonna take the next step unless you have the opposition to fight. If you look at the fighter’s he’s fought, who is the best fighter that he’s ever beaten? If you want to argue that it’s David Lemieux, I don’t think Lemiuex is a great fighter.

I don’t know who would be considered the best fighter Golovkin’s fought but I know that he hasn’t fought a very high level of opponent. A part of that is politics — Peter Quillin and Daniel Jacobs live on the other side of the street, he’s not gonna get Mayweather, maybe he’ll get the winner of Cotto and Canelo. So until Golovkin can fight somebody that is worthy of his talents, I think he’s gonna be a little stagnant.

Jenna J: Do you think it’s unfair that people want to see him go up in weight and fight Andre Ward, who is now starting to hover around 175lbs?

Steve Farhood: Yeah that’s a huge jump. If Ward is in fact a light heavyweight then throw that fight out the window, I don’t want to see Golovkin fight Ward if he’s 173lbs. A catch weight of 165lbs or 166lbs is acceptable but Ward looks like he’s fighting at light heavyweight and I don’t see that as a match up. As tempting as it would be, I just think Ward is too big and that would be sort of unfair to Golovkin.

Jenna J: I want to talk about the rise of the Premier Boxing Champions series. What do you think of the fights that have been made so far? Have you seen the fights you wanted to see given that Al Haymon has such a depth in his stable?

Steve Farhood: Well I think when you have network fights on six different networks and last week there were actually four shows in five nights, it was crazy. You’re gonna get some really good match ups and you’re gonna get some matchups that are standard matchups.

One thing you have to look at when you look at the matchups, for every Mares-Santa Cruz and for every Guerrero-Thurman, you’re also gonna get fights where someone is a pretty strong favorite to win because Haymon is not just focusing on the big name fighters but he’s also developing fighters. There’s so many young fighters that he’s developing as well and those fighters are not gonna be put in fifty-fifty fights.

You have to kind of look at the totality of it to determine how good the matchups have been. I think there’s been some real good ones, there’s been some upsets. All in all, I think the matchups have been good, but they could be better and that’s something that we’ll have to just see as 2016 progresses.

There’s been some good matchups and there’s more to come for sure because when you have as many fighters as Haymon does, I think that you can risk building guys against fighters that will make them better, and that’s how you get better as a fighter.

Jenna J: The next biggest PBC fight that’s in talks right now is Keith Thurman vs. Shawn Porter. What do you think of that fight and who are you picking?

Steve Farhood: Well it’s a great fight, Keith Thurman and Shawn Porter both have a lot of star appeal. Porter has the one loss to Kell Brook, and Thurman is undefeated. I’d probably make Thurman the favorite, I think he’s probably a little bit better as a pure boxer and definitely has more one punch power, but Porter can be a very difficult guy.

Porter will look to get inside and make it a physical fight, but it’s exactly the kind of fight that builds stars. If the winner is impressive enough and it’s on NBC Primetime TV, then that’s reaching a lot of eyeball and that is very valuable to the fighters and the division. And who know maybe we create a new opponent for Floyd Mayweather down the road.

Jenna J: Where do you think the future of boxing will go now that Floyd is gone and after Pacquiao retires?

Steve Farhood: Well history repeats itself and what I’ve seen in my thirty seven years of doing this is that every time a Muhammad Ali disappears, or a Ray Leonard disappears, and now it’s Floyd Mayweather disappearing, everybody says the same thing, “Oh the sport is going to die, the sport is gonna go away because there’s nobody to carry the sport,” then someone emerges.

That person might not emerge right away, sometimes there are two or three years of the down period. Clearly Pacquiao and Mayweather have been the biggest names in the sport. Klitschko, to American fans at least, does not rate, he’s never captured the publics imagination. Maybe Deontay Wilder’s the answer, maybe Keith Thurman’s the answer, maybe Golovkin’s the answer, who knows.

I think when you least expect it someone emerges. It’s a star sport, stars carry the sport, you need stars. Having fighters fight on free TV is a big step in creating stars, it’s a step that we didn’t have as little as two years ago. I think the sport will be fine, I think boxing at the top level when it’s done right and when it turns out well is still a fantastic sport and that’s not gonna change anytime soon.