By Abdi Haid: In the past, British super middleweight George Groves sparred with unbeaten middleweight Gennady Golovkin to help him out to get ready for one of his fights. Not long after their sparring sessions rumors surfaced about how the hard hitting Groves knocked Golovkin to the canvas during the sparring sessions. A lot of boxing fans believed this.
However, this week, Golovkin finally cleared the air about what happened during the sparring sessions, saying that it was spar for him because Groves didn’t have much in the way of hand speed. Golovkin further said he hurt Groves with a body shot that he thinks broke his ribs. At this point the sparring session was halted by Groves’ team.
Golovkin thinks Groves lacks punching power, and that’s why he lost his last fight to WBC super middleweight champion Badou Jack last year in September on the undercard of the Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Andre Berto fight card on Showtime PPV.
“We were just training, I helped him, he helped me,” Golovkin said to skysports.com about his sparring session with Groves. “I did a couple of times [punching the] body, I broke [his] ribs I think, just I punched him, and his corner just said ‘Okay, it’s finished, stop’. For me, it was a very easy spar, very easy. I’d had maybe a couple days more, maybe one week. It was my second week sparring, for George it was the first week sparring. I felt more comfortable. New sparring, new guy, maybe he had a lot of weight, because he was too slow for me.”
It’s good that Golovkin finally cleared up the sparring rumors. There were a lot of boxing fans, me included, who believed the previous rumors that Groves had put Golovkin on his backside during the sparring session they had. But with Golovkin finally clearing the air about what actually happened, one now sees things from a different perspective. Now all we need is Groves to give his side to happened during the sparring session. Perhaps he might have a different spin on what took place.
