By Dan Ambrose Gabriel Rosado (21-6, 13 KO’s) thinks his performance in losing a 7th round knockout to WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovin (25-0, 22 KO’s) last weekend proved that he’s an elite fighter. Rosado believes he won a lot of new fans by staying in there until the 7th when he fight was halted by his corner. Rosado says he’s going to move back down to 154 where he hopes he can get fights against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Alfredo Angulo based on his performance against Golovkin.
Rosado told ringtv “I gave fans a good fight and I believe I do have more fans after Saturday night…Fans will want to see me again. I stood up against the toughest guy at 160…The Golovkin fight puts me on that elite level.”
Maybe it’s me but I didn’t see anything from Rosado’s performance that showed that he’s anything close to being an elite fighter. Indeed, Rosado didn’t perform like an elite fighter would be fighting in the retreat mode for 90% of the fight. That’s really elite; that’s someone looking to just survive. Rosado said the battle plan was to give ground for the first four rounds and then go after Golovkin from the 5th round on.
It looks like Rosado followed that game plan to the letter because he moved away from Golovkin in the first rounds and only threw a tiny handful of punches. To Rosado’s credit, he did come on in the 5th round and was able to land some nice shots. However, the brief – and really the only success for Rosado – was short-lived as Golovkin hurt Rosado with a big right uppercut at the start of the 6th round when Rosado came right at him.
After getting hurt, Rosado went back into the running mode for the remainder of the fight. The only round where Rosado threw any meaningful punches was in the 5th round. After that, Rosado was hurt in the 6th and back on his bike until the fight was stopped in the 7th. So the question is did Rosado fight at an elite level against Golovkin or was he just another over-matched contender with poor game plan?
From my perspective I didn’t see anything from Rosado that would win him any fans. He was basically back-peddling the entire fight save for the 5th, and he was bloody mess while running. Do boxing fans want to see that kind of fighter again? I doubt it. I thought Golokvin’s previous opponent Grzegorz Proksa was a lot more interesting to watch compared to Rosado because at least he came to fight Golovkin and wasn’t running around the ring like he was afraid. Proksa made a fight of it and then went out on his shield in the 5th.
Rosado failed to make a fight of it and the fight stopped by his corner. The difference between the way Proksa fought Golovkin and the way Rosado fought him were light night and day. Proksa was much more interesting to watch and he landed much bigger shots on Golovkin.
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