By Jaime Ortega: Gennady Golovkin has arguably become one of the most hated boxer of late, after he defeated Daniel Jacobs on March 18. Many fans suddenly turned their backs on the Kazakh boxer and forsook his victory as a robbery. The once most feared boxer suddenly became human and is now on everyone’s hit list.
Oscar De La Hoya out of the blue sky wants Saul Canelo Alvarez to fight Golovkin in September, and has warned Team Golovkin to not fight Billy Joe Sounders in June – which would make Golovkin undisputed since Bernard Hopkins retired — or Canelo won’t take the fight with Golovkin this year. Sounds like a threat to Golovkin.
Many in the super middleweight division is expecting Golovkin to move up, and expect easy prey after watching the Jacobs bout. Gilberto Ramirez, Andre Dirrel, Badou Jack, James DeGale all want a piece of Golovkin at 168lbs.
But I want to critique Canelo and Jacobs because it is somewhat not fair for boxing how these two roam the 154-160lbs divisions. I could also argue Errol Spence Jr. and Terence Crawford are two big for the 140-147lbs divisions, but that is another story.
One of the reason why I hate catch weights and modern boxing weight method is because most fighters the day after the weigh-in, outweigh their opponent by 10-20 pounds. It is not fair for boxing to outweigh your opponent by more than five pounds if you strictly belong in one weight class. I mean what is the point to fight at 160lbs, when the next day you fight at 179lbs? Jacobs outweighed Golovkin and clearly was the bigger man on fight night.
First, I believe Jacobs belongs in the light heavyweight division and should be banging heads with Andre Ward, Adonis Stevenson, Arthur Beterbiev, Badou Jack and others. Jacobs showed against Golovkin a lot of skill, but even outweighing Golovkin, he still wasn’t able to knock him out or knock him down. The judges probably might have seen the weight difference and gave Golovkin the victory single handedly. Jacobs had ten consecutive knockouts before facing Golovkin, and was not able to capitalize his KO streak with Golovkin.
Second, Canelo does not belong at Jr. Middleweight, the day after the weigh-in he blows up all the way to 170lbs. Canelo belongs in the super middleweight division in my opinion, and he appears to outweigh most other Jr. Middleweights. I believe he is playing games with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. and his team is trying to drain him to take his power away. When Golovkin fights Canelo, I predict that Canelo will clearly be the bigger guy.
People also don’t understand Golovkin is willing to fight the best, and out of all the boxers at 160lbs only Jacobs who I think belongs in the light heavyweight division gave him trouble. He deserves a lot of credit for beating Jacobs – controversial or not – he did what he could to survive the fight and earned his victory with high praise.
Golovkin’s boxing ability is now questioned by the casual boxing community and by those who simply could possibly be jealous of his accomplishment. If Golovkin fights Billy Joe Sounders, and moves to 168lbs, he will be criticized for not fighting Canelo. But it was Canelo and not Golovkin who vacated his WBC middleweight belt after defeating Miguel Cotto at catch-weight of 155 lbs, and tried to fight Golovkin at a catch weight somewhere at 156lbs instead of 160lbs. Canelo gave excuses to fight Golovkin at 160lbs, but he is now insisting that Chaves Jr. face him at a catch weight at 164 1/2 lbs. And Golovkin is the one ducking? Canelo still haven’t even fight David Lemieux.
The only boxer who can beat Golovkin is Andre Ward in my view. And even Ward won’t have it easy against the Kazakh boxer who has excellent timing and power. Jacobs pulled his speed and aggression to defeat Golovkin, but wasn’t as accurate in his counters and landed many shots on the gloves. Ward is more accurate than Jacobs, but he lacks the speed, power and aggression that helped Jacobs intimidate Golovkin. If Ward is favorite to win the bout against Golovkin, it shouldn’t be by much. Sergey Kovalev is a knockout artist, but he is not nearly as complete as Golovkin overall.
All in all, Golovkin has got a lot of hate lately after his controversial defeat – I mean controversial for those who never saw the jabs landed in Golovkin’s favor – and he suddenly got exposed and is now human.
Golovkin is a true warrior of the sport and the hate towards against him is very unfair, such hate is familiar with those who criticized Floyd Mayweather Jr. career. The same can be said about Keith Thurman, who many accuse of ducking Errol Spence Jr., when Spence doesn’t even hold one belt as of yet; hyped after beating a 140lbs on Chris Algieri who Manny Pacquiao dropped six times and gave the original blueprint.
In the end of the day, UFC fans are more loyal to their fighters than boxing fans, and the hate against Golovkin and other boxers is reminisced of such truth – thus the decline of boxing in America and its replacement for MMA continues to grow daily.