Gennady Golovkin: Nothing left to prove at 160?

By John Calderon - 06/29/2016 - Comments

Image: Gennady Golovkin: Nothing left to prove at 160?

By J. Calderon: We get it, WBC/WBA/IBF/IBO middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KO’s) is presumably the best at 160. What we don’t get, is why GGG continues to beat at a dead horse in a stubborn attempt to unify the middleweight division. GGG now has three of the four major organizational belts, thanks in part to a giving and generous former WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez (47-1-1, 33 KO’s) who seemed happy to oblige with Gennady’s ultimatum: “Give me my belt, hey, I need my belt.”

The last remaining belt is in possession of WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders (23-0, 12 KO’s), who insists that he is willing to face GGG, but the money has to be right. An eerily similar response was heard from another highly desired Golovkin opponent, WBA (regular) middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs (31-1, 28 KO’s).

In a recent interview with esnewsreporting.com, Jacobs argued: “I’m not going to fight a GGG for no chump change!” When asked how much would it take to get him in the ring with GGG, Jacobs responded: “How much does it take? It just takes enough to make me comfortable!”

In other words, Jacobs and Saunders, the two best remaining opponents at 160 for GGG, aside from Golden Boy Promotions’ cash cow, would both have to receive enough money to be comfortable with not only taking a loss, but a KO loss, and having to rebuild their careers, retire, or face irrelevance. The fact that Billy Joe Saunders and Daniel Jacobs view a GGG fight as an end-of-the-road, cash-out fight, reveals all that needs to be known. Saunders and Jacobs have fear in their heart, and will continue to go after the low-hanging fruit and rack up a nice retirement nest egg for the next 2 years before cashing-out with Golovkin, or they’ll face him right now if you’d like, but for the equivalent of five fight’s worth of money. Do you blame them?

Now, we all know that the fight everyone asked for was Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. Unfortunately, late last week, Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya broke the internet once more and announced a devastating and severely unwanted matchup between Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and little-known WBO light middleweight champion Liam “Beefy” Smith (23-0-1, 13 KO’s) on 9/17. The Golovkin fight and the millions of boxing fans that have been taken for granted, were left out in the cold to marinate for an entire year. Oscar De La Hoya must surely enjoy kicking the boxing public while they’re down. After all of this talk about former five-division world champion Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr. (49-0, 23 KO’s) turning away millions of casual fans from the sport and delivering a dud, and here you are following his exact blueprint. What Oscar De La Hoya needs to learn from “The Fight of the Century,” is that there is such a thing as over-marinating, and it usually leaves a salty taste in your mouth.

Canelo’s Mexican pride and popularity have taken a major hit as of lately, and it visibly eats away at Canelo that he is no longer viewed as fearless and respected amongst his countrymen, but rather as the biggest laughing stock in all of boxing and social media. I don’t think that Canelo was ready for this. Heck, I don’t even think that Oscar was ready for any of this. You’d hate to see Oscar sacrifice poor Canelo’s promising career in an attempt to keep Golden Boy Promotions financially afloat. Canelo appears vulnerable and beatable to more than one fighter and in more than one division, and you can’t just duck everyone forever. At this point, Oscar seems to be enacting a hail-mary strategy by attempting to build Canelo’s stock the last little bit that he can before cashing out on his name and fan base, and feeding him to the highest-bidding lion in the room.

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Don’t get me wrong, although I favor GGG in all of these hypothetical match-ups, these are not easy fights for him. I do believe that the aforementioned fighters stand a chance against GGG. I suppose you could say: “all they have to do is follow the right game plan,” or “stay on their bicycle all night,” but all of that goes out the window when Golovkin starts cutting the ring like a switchblade and all of a sudden you find yourself exposed to monstrous and debilitating body shots. Golovkin is known to spar with light heavyweights, and punches through a couple of them per day. Yet, stranger things have happened in boxing, and scoring an upset is always only one punch away.

Gennady Golovkin needs to move up and move on. He should forget about Canelo and Oscar, Billy Joe, and Danny Jacobs, at least for now. GGG doesn’t need and doesn’t get a pass. If all of these fighters don’t want to fight him, then fine, but at least fight the ones who will! Fight Kell “Special K” Brook (36-0, 25 KO’s) at 157 in a UK money-grab fight, fight Chris “Next Gen” Eubank Jr. (23-1, 18 KO’s) in a daddy’s last name scalp grab, and put the sport you admire and respect so much above business by boxing Erislandy “The Dream” Lara (23-2-2, 13 KO’s).

A second division title awaits you against WBO super middleweight champion Gilberto “Zurdo” Ramirez (34-0, 24 KO’s), before luring former unified WBC/WBA super middleweight champion Andre “Son of God” Ward back down to 168 to seal your legacy. In the closing years of your career, since your able to hurt so many light heavyweights in sparring, why don’t you put your friendship with WBA/WBO/IBF light heavyweight champion Sergey “Krusher” Kovalev (29-0-1, 26 KO’s) to the side and lace them up like we saw WBA welterweight champion Keith “One Time” Thurman (27-0, 22 KO’s) and former IBF welterweight champion Shawn “Showtime” Porter (26-2-1, 16 KO’s) do in last week’s PBC thriller. You see Gennady, you don’t need Canelo or the WBO middleweight strap to validate your career or to become the next PPV attraction, what you need to do is dream big, take the risks that no one else will, and just dare to be great. The rest will follow.