Golovkin to wear Lakers colors for gloves

By Boxing News - 05/14/2015 - Comments

By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs) will be wearing Los Angeles Lakers colors for his gloves on Saturday night against challenger Willie Monroe (19-1, 6 KOs) at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

The gloves are purple and yellow like the uniforms the Lakers wear. Golovkin said that he wanted to match the uniform colors of the Lakers, which is one of the NBA teams in Los Angeles.

Now all Golovkin needs to do is make sure he wins his fight against the ultra-confident Monroe.

If you’ve gotten the chance to see some of Monroe’s interviews, he comes across as incredibly confident to the point it doesn’t seem healthy. He doesn’t seem like he’s faking it either. Monroe just seems to honestly believe that he’s going to win the fight on Saturday night.

It kind of reminiscent of how confident Manny Pacquiao was before his fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their “Fight of the Century” on May 2nd. Pacquiao acted like he had the fight in the bag, whereas Mayweather seemed to be nervous. But instead of Pacquiao winning the fight, he was dominated by Mayweather.

Monroe’s confidence will likely not help him much on Saturday because the unassuming Golovkin is simply the better fighter by far with the much superior punching power.

“I will shock the world,” Monroe said to ESPN.com. “I think this is an awesome fight. We have two contrasting styles and that will make for some spontaneous combustion. We will see which style comes out on top.”

If Monroe had the punching power to back up his bold talk, it would be easier to take him serious. But Monroe isn’t not a big puncher, as you can tell by his 30 percent KO percentage. In contrast, Golovkin has a 90.63% knockout percentage, and he’s done this against far better competition.

Without the punching power to back up his confident exterior, Monroe is going to be stuck having to try and win a decision. The only way that Monroe can win a decision against a popular fighter like Golovkin is if he can land enough shots to impress the judges.

Given that Golovkin fires back immediately each time that his opponent throws a shot, it means that Monroe is going to be hit about as much as he lands. If he’s getting hit with Golovkin’s harder shots, it’s going to be next to impossible for him to win rounds. The judges will side with the fighter who has the better power and the more aggressive fighting style. That means they’re going to be giving Golovkin the rounds.

“Everybody’s different. Some people need to be encouraged and told that they’re the best, to be the best, and some people need to be told that you can’t do it, so they can go out there and prove that they can,” Monroe said. “And I’m one of those people that’s always looking to prove people wrong.”

Monroe feels that because he’s being doubted by a lot of boxing fans, it means that he’s going to do well in the fight. If it were that easy a lot of fighters would do a lot better with their careers.