Jacobs lacks the strength to pressure Golovkin says Sanchez

By Boxing News - 01/17/2017 - Comments

Image: Jacobs lacks the strength to pressure Golovkin says Sanchez

By Dan Ambrose: Gennady Golovkin is expected to be the one that is applying the pressure on Daniel Jacobs for as long as their fight lasts on March 18 on HBO PPV at Madison Square Garden in New York. That’s what Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez believes, and that’s what many boxing fans believe. Sanchez says it bluntly that the 29-year-old Jacobs doesn’t have the strength to back Golovkin up and pressure him for any length of time.

Sanchez thinks it’s going to be Golovkin that will be doing most of the pressuring in the fight. It would be surprising if Jacobs does any pressuring, because it’s not his style when facing big punchers. Sanchez respects the right hand punching power of Jacobs, and he plans on having Golovkin to away from getting hit with that weapon. But he still thinks that Jacobs is going to land his big power shots at times, and he sees him potentially buzzing Golovkin with a big shot at some point in the fight.

That’ll be interesting if Jacobs can hurt Golovkin, because if he does, he’ll very likely flurry on him the way he did against Peter Quillin in his 1st round stoppage. Jacobs did the same thing in his first fight against Sergio Mora, and it almost cost him the fight. Jacobs started unloading on Mora after knocking him down. Mora responded by dropping Jacobs with a big shot.

Sanchez said this to Fighthub.com about his thoughts on the Golovkin-Jacobs contest:

“He’s going to get hit,” said Sanchez about Golovkin in his fight against Jacobs. “Danny hits Golovkin with a clean shot. I think Danny can hit Golovkin with a clean shot. He’s got that kind of power. I’m not putting any thought in Danny having a bad chin. I’m concentrating on trying to get away from his right hand. I think the style is going to give Golovkin the benefit. I think the pressure, the intense mental pressure is going to be too hard for anybody to handle, because if you make a mistake when he’s pressing you, he’s going to get hit with a shot that’s very hard. So that right there is what wears people down, and eventually he can do what he wants to do. Danny, I don’t think he has the strength to pressure Golovkin like Golovkin is going to pressure him. He’s got the skills, he’s got the tools, and he’s got the right hand, but he doesn’t have the strength to keep Golovkin off of him,” said Sanchez.

Jacobs may not want to admit it, but he’s been very well matched for the last seven years since he was stepped up against a better fighter in Dmitri Pirog in 2010. Jacobs was on his bike the entire time in that fight. He did not come forward to pressure Pirog. Asking Jacobs to change his stripes at this point in his career is probably not realistic. His trainer Andre Rozier and Virgil Hunter can come up with a game plan that will involve Jacobs pressuring Triple G, but when it’s all said and done, I think he’s going to revert to his usual style of fighting once Golovkin puts any kind of pressure on him.

There are two versions of Jacobs. There are the aggressive Jacobs that we see when he’s matched against weak punchers with limited talent like Sergio Mora and Jarrod Fletcher, and then there is the timid Jacobs that moves frequently like we in his fights against Pirog and Ishe Smith. Jacobs has not had too many talented opponents in the ring with him during his career. Is that an accident or did Jacobs’ management make it a point to keep him away from the good fighters after his mishap against Pirog in 2010. That was seven years ago. How do you not face quality opposition on a routine basis for seven long years?

“I think this is a good fight for us as long as it goes, but I don’t think it goes into the third part of the fight,” said Sanchez. “I think 7 or 8 rounds in a great fight where Golovkin gets hit also. I won’t be surprised if Golovkin gets buzzed. I won’t be surprised if they go toe-to-toe at times, and they both get hit. But I think Golovkin wears him down, and wears him out and stops him sometime around the 8th. He’s the best boxer we’ve faced thus far. He’s also the kind of boxer that wants to hang on the inside and fight with you. That is intriguing to me, because we may see a different facet of Golovkin. We may get to see him fight on the inside. So if Danny can hang and fight on the inside, then I think we’re going to be treated to a Ray Leonard-Robert Duran, Thomas Hearns-Hagler, those kinds of fights, where they’re on the inside trying to maneuver to land punches,” said Sanchez.

It would be surprising if the Golovkin-Jacobs fight goes eight rounds. It would mean that Jacobs will need to use a lot of movement to get to that point. If Jacobs and Rozier study the video of Golovkin’s last loss in the 2014 Olympics, then they night choose to do a lot of holding like the Russian fighter Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov used to beat Golovkin. The Russian fighter was holding and then flinging Golovkin. I don’t know that kind of fighting would be allowed at the pro level. Gaydarbekov was initiating all the clinches, and then flinging Golovkin to the side when he would break from the clinch. It looked like a wrestling throw down move, the surprisingly the Olympic referee didn’t stop the Russian fighter from using that move.

Asked about the status of the Golovkin-Canelo negotiations, Sanchez said, “Tom [Loeffler] tells me negotiations are going well, but right now if we don’t beat Jacobs, who cares about the negotiations. The negotiations are going well. I hope it happens for boxing. It’s a good fight for boxing. But I’m not holding my breath for it to happen. I’ll believe it when we’re in the center of the ring touching gloves. There’s been so much talk, and so much backwards stepping, saying one thing and meaning another that I’m not sure it’ll happen in September. If it does, then it’s a good fight for boxing, but I’m not holding my breath,” said Sanchez about the Canelo vs. Golovkin negotiations.

The Canelo vs. Golovkin fight has a very little chance of happening in my opinion. What’s going to likely ultimately keep the fight from getting made is the huge difficult between the pay-per-view numbers for the Canelo vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight on HBO pay-per-view compared to the PPV numbers for Golovkin’s fight against Jacobs. Assuming that Canelo-Chavez Jr. brings in over 1 million buys on HBO PPV, and the Golovkin-Jacobs fight brings in around 150,000 buys or less, then you can expect Canelo’s promoters at Golden Boy Promotions to use that information to offer Golovkin a much smaller cut of the revenue. I don’t think they’ll give Golovkin a percentage deal like he and Loeffler want. They’ll still with the flat fee like what they’ve already offered, and what they offered to Chavez Jr.

If Golovkin and Loeffler say no to the lump sum amount, then Golden Boy will very likely move on and use the September date to fight WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders for his title. Golden Boy has already lined up a rematch between Canelo and Miguel Cotto for December. That fight is expected to bring in a high number of PPV buys. It probably won’t bring in the 900,000 buys that the first Canelo-Cotto fight pulled in back in November 2015, but it should bring in at least 600,000 buys. If there is going to be a Canelo vs. Golovkin fight, it will take place in 2018. I see it only taking place if Team Golovkin agrees to the deal that Golden Boy wants him to accept.