(Photo credit: K2 Promotions) By Allan Fox: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (27-0, 24 KO’s) will be defending his title against the much shorter 5’7″ Curtis Stevens (25-3, 18 KO’s) this Saturday night on HBO at the Madison Square Garden Theater, in New York, New York, USA. The fight has been advertised as being a competitive one, but for those fans who’ve seen Steven’s previous losses to Andre Dirrell and Jesse Brinkley in the past.
All they had to do was box the shorter-armed Stevens from the outside and he was helpless. The fights where Stevens has found success has been against guys that were willing to let him get close enough to throw his shots, and even then Stevens still has never beaten a good fighter before. It’s been largely 2nd and 3rd tier opposition.
Abel Sanchez, the trainer for Golovkin, sees this as a fight that will help showcase his talent to the U.S fans that will be tuning in on HBO to watch the fight. He expects Golovkin to slowly take the 5’7″ Stevens apart round by round and then knock him out in spectacular fashion. Sanchez also believes that Stevens will run for the entire fight after he tastes Golovkin’s power early on.
Sanchez said “We’re ready to showcase the best middleweight in the world this Saturday night. Golovkin will deliver another terrific performance.”
Sanchez wants to match Golovkin against Floyd Mayweather Jr. or Carl Froch next if he can get either of those two to agree to facing him. Mayweather is probably a big no because he’s not going to want to fight a dangerous guy like Golovkin, even at 154. The margin of error is too slim with Golovkin because he can hurt you with one punch and Mayweather wouldn’t be able to go through the entire fight without getting hit really hard at least 50-80 times by Golovkin.
With his kind of power, it might only need one shot to KO Mayweather. Froch is a different story. He wants the fight, his promoter Eddie Hearn wants the fight and his British fans want the fight. The main obstacle to a Froch-Golovkin fight would be the weight. Froch says he can’t get down to 160 to make the fight happen, so a fight between them would require that Golovkin either move up to 168 or try and get Hearn and Froch to agree on a catch-weight to make it happen. Golovkin would need to also agree to taking the fight in the UK because Froch and Hearn wouldn’t likely be agreeable to fighting in the United States where Froch has no fan base.
Stevens has knockout wins over Saul Roman, Elvin Ayala and Romaro Johnson lately. But those guys far below the talent level of Golovkin, and so you can’t say that the victories mean anything. It just means that the 28-year-old Stevens has been carefully matched since his loss to Brinkley in 2010. Stevens is going to have to try and find a way to get close to Golovkin so that he can land his shots. Without the reach, Stevens will need to walk through a lot of heavy shots from Golovkin in order to land his own big punches. That’s going to be a big problem for Stevens because he’s not had to fight anyone with power in his career and he’s up there in age to be facing his first puncher.