By Eric Baldwin: Danny Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) is reportedly a HUGE 8-1 underdog in his showdown against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on March 18 on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York. Jacobs has a lot of talent as well as punching power going for him in this fight, but he’s facing a guy that is viewed as the best fighter in the 160lb division by many boxing experts.
Indeed, Golovkin may be the best fighter in all of boxing. He’s not just beating his opposition; he’s dominating them and knocking them out, all of them. Golovkin has knocked out 23 consecutive opponents since 2008, and Jacobs would seem to be No.24.
Jacobs has got to find a way to prove the odds-makers as being wrong who picked Golovkin as an 8 to 1 favorite. Just how Jacobs can do that is the real problem. He’s someone that does well against light punchers that aren’t hitting him back with anything particularly hard, because he needs to be able to pound on his opponents with his heavy shots over the course of his fights for him to get knockouts.
Golovkin isn’t the type that is just going to let Jacobs tee off on him without firing back his own power shots. Jacobs is not going to be able to setup his shots in the same way that he’s done in the past because Golovkin is going to be forcing him to fight in an out of control manner. In other words, Golovkin is going to force Jacobs to fight for survival from round one.
You can expect Golovkin to jump on Jacobs as soon as the fight starts, and put him under an extreme amount of pressure. This is what Russian Dmitry Pirog did in beating Jacobs by a 5th round knockout in 2010. Pirogs gave Jacobs no breathing room for him to rest and collect himself. Pirog forced a war on Jacobs, and he crumbled quickly under that kind of fighting conditions.
Trainer Freddie Roach likes the Golovkin-Jacobs fight, as he’s a fan of both fighters. Roach sees Jacobs as a guy with a lot of punching power and loads of talent. As for Golovkin, Roach believes he’s the best fighter in the sport right now.
“Great fight. He’s a good boxer, and I look forward to that one,” said Roach about the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight.
Trainer John David Jackson sees Golovkin as a better all-around fighter than Jacobs with superior power.
“I think Triple G is a better fighter, stronger,” said Jackson.
Jacobs doesn’t mind being the underdog in this fight because it takes the pressure off of him. With few boxing fans believing that he has a chance of winning the fight, Jacobs doesn’t need to worry as much about pressure that he normally would have. Jacobs has had pressure on him lately with his many mismatches against the likes of Sergio Mora, who he fought twice in a row, Caleb Truax, Jarrod Fletcher, Peter Quillin and Milton Nunez. That’s the entire problem that Jacobs has. He’s had too many low pressure fights against lesser fighters, and now he’s expected to fight someone that is worlds better than the guys he’s been fighting.
Jacobs hasn’t had the experience to get him ready for what he’s going to be facing when he gets inside the ring with Golovkin. Sometimes experience isn’t needed for a fighter to do well against an upper echelon fighter, but in most cases it does matter.
Jacobs may ultimately give Golovkin more of a test than what he’ll get when/if he faces the 5’9” Saul Canelo Alvarez in 2017. That fight could turn out to be another Golovkin vs. Curtis Stevens’s type of fight due to Canelo’s lack of size, and his inability to fight on the outside in any real way. Canelo is a good fighter, but he’s mostly effective at short to medium distances.
If you look at Canelo’s toughest fights of his career, he did most of his best work in the medium to short distances from his opponents. When Canelo is on the outside, he’s only capable of jabbing. He can’t throw long shots. The 6-foot Jacobs is capable of throwing long right hands with a lot of speed behind them. If Jacobs is able to land some of his longer punches against Golovkin, it could make for a hard fight for the Kazakhstan fighter.
Jacobs will have a three inch reach advantage over the 5’10 ½” Golovkin in this fight. That may not help Jacobs though, as he also had a three inch reach advantage over the 5’11” Dmitry Pirog in their fight in 2010, and Pirog had no problems getting in punching range to nail Jacobs with hard hooks to the head and body. Jacobs was fine when he was the one dishing out the punishment. Where he had problems in the fight was in taking the shots in return from Pirog. Jacobs did not like getting hit AT ALL, and he seemed to be in distress from the earliest moments of the fight in getting hit by Pirog. What’s interesting about that is Pirog was not seen as a tremendous puncher like Golovkin. Pirog (20-0, 15 KOs) had good punching power, but he was never a huge KO artist in the same mold as GGG.
Jacobs’ ability to take punishment in the Golovkin fight will ultimately be the decider in this fight in whether he has a chance of winning. Jacobs has the size, speed and the punching power to potentially beat Golovkin. The thing Jacobs maybe lacking is the chin. He’s been knocked out before, and he’s only fought one good fighter in his entire career. That’s the disappointing thing.
Jacobs is going to have to take major shots from Golovkin for him to be able to stick around long enough to possibly tire him out and score a knockout. With the way that Pirog was able to blast Jacobs out in five rounds with the pressure he was putting on him, you can bet that Golovkin is going to use that fight as a blueprint in how to beat Jacobs.
The Jacobs that lost to Pirog was younger, faster and arguably a better fighter than the 29-year-old Jacobs that exists today. Jacobs hasn’t gotten younger in the last six years. You can’t say that he’s a better fighter than he was at 23. A person’s punch resistance doesn’t get better as they age. If Jacobs couldn’t take hard punches in 2010 from Pirog, then he’s probably not going to be able to take Golovkin’s hard shots either.
The Golovkin-Jacobs fight is a great match to help set up a much bigger one between Golovkin and Canelo later on in 2017 in September. Hopefully the boxing fans get to see a great match between Golovkin and Jacobs on March 18th, because it’ll help create a lot of interest in the Canelo-Golovkin fight in September.
It still remains to be seen whether the Golovkin vs. Canelo fight can get made. Golden Boy seems to be maneuvering Canelo into position where he can win the WBO middleweight title off champion Billy Joe Saunders, and then use the WBO title as a bargaining piece to get a better financial deal against Golovkin.
It might work against Golden Boy if Canelo wins the WBO title by causing them to overplay their hand with GGG. If Golden Boy tries to use the WBO title as leverage to get Golovkin to agree to a small chunk of the overall revenue of the fight, then it’s safe to say the fight will never get made or least it won’t get made in 2017. They would then kick the fight down the road to 2018, and try again to make it. In the meantime, Golovkin gets older and likely starts to lose some of his skills if not his punching power.