Move up weight to prove your worth, Floyd Mayweather tells Gennady Golovkin

Floyd Mayweather has called for Gennady Golovkin to step up in weight.

Gennady Golovkin stopped Kell Brook in five rounds in September

The former five-weight world champion wants to see ‘Triple G’ move out of the middleweight division to prove he is as good as people are saying.

Knockout king Golovkin (36-0, 33KOs) has made 16 defences of his WBA world title at 160lbs and his IBF strap twice, following his fifth-round stoppage of Kell Brook.

Mayweather took another swipe at trainer Dominic Ingle’s decision to stop September’s fight that saw Brook fracture an eye socket because “there should be no quit in no fighter”.

‘Money’ also thinks Golovkin has looked good beating “stationary” opponents and wants to see him step up to improve his current standing and overall legacy.

“What we want to see is this: we’ve seen Sugar Ray Leonard go up in weight, Roberto Duran go up in weight, we’ve had so many legendary fighters go up in weight but my nephew’s favourite fighter, Triple G, has yet to go up in weight,” he told reporters in Las Vegas, according to Boxing Scene.

“I see my nephew after the Kell Brook and he said [Golovkin] ‘wasn’t what I thought he was, he cool’. I told you he’s got punching power for a stationary target. Then he said ‘unc, you would have stopped him, you would’ve destroyed him’. I said ‘nephew you ain’t telling me nothing new’. He was just a fan of Triple G fighting those stationary targets.”

Golovkin will make his 17th defence of his WBA title against mandatory challenger Daniel Jacobs next, with a long-awaited showdown with Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez to possibly take place in 2017.

Mayweather, who won world titles at super-featherweight, lightweight, super-lightweight, welterweight and super-welterweight, has also been linked with trying to get ‘Triple G’ to fight his super-middleweight fighter Badou Jack, although the WBC world champion is expected to take on IBF holder James DeGale in a unification fight later this year.