By Dan Ambrose: Top Rank promoter Bob Arum is really impressed what he sees of WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (24-0, 21 KO’s) thus far and he sees him as the same kind of exciting fighter as the legendary former world champion Marvin Hagler.
Arum said to AnnaSportsReporter “Gennady is one of the top fighters in the world. I enjoy watching him fight. He reminds me of the way Marvin Hagler fights where they don’t mess around and they bring their fights to their opponents.”
Arum is right. Golovkin really brings the fight to his opponents a lot like Hagler used to do, and that’s what makes him so incredibly tough. Golovkin walks his opponents down and then blasts them out with his huge power. I see Golovkin as being a bigger puncher than Hagler. Golovkin can really bring it. There’s obviously been bigger middleweight punchers like than Golovkin in the past, such as Julian Jackson and possibly John “The Beast” Magabi, but not too many.
Golovkin is tougher because he doesn’t load up on every shot like those guys did, so when he does put everything he has into one of his punches, it’s pretty shocking for his opponents. That difference in power catches his opponents off guard resulting in him knocking them out.
Golovkin sometimes does load up everything he throws in his last fight against Grzegorz Proksa last September. In that fight, Golovkin bludgeoned Proksa into submission after knocking him down three times in the fight to get a 5th round TKO.
Golovkin has a fight coming up this month on HBO against Gabriel Rosado (21-5, 13 KO’s) on January 19th at Madison Square Garden. Rosado is a good fighter and one of the best 154. However, his weakness, as we saw in his 2nd round knockout loss to Alfredo Angulo, is dealing with pressure. Rosado doesn’t react well at all to being backed up and he has a bad habit of easing up when in close.
Rosado doesn’t protect his head enough when his opponent is next to him as if he’s not used to fighting guys that can fight on the inside. This is how Angulo hurt Rosado. When he got close, he tagged him with a right to the head that Rosado wasn’t expecting and the shot knocked him down. After that, Rosado was never the same and was knocked down two more times before the fight was stopped in the 2nd round.
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