By Allan Fox: Gennady Golovkin rates Daniel Jacobs as his most dangerous opponent of his entire 10-year pro career, but the boxing fans overwhelmingly see this as just another knockout for Triple G. It’s a bigger opponent for Golovkin than the guys that he’s been facing lately, but it’s still someone that he has a very good chance of knocking out when the two of them fight on Saturday on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York.
In looking at the two fighters during Friday’s weigh-in, Jacobs appeared taller, stronger and the more menacing of the two fighters. However, Golovkin will likely be the far bigger puncher when they start letting their hands go on Saturday. Golovkin has unreal punching power that seems to come from nowhere.
“He’s my most dangerous opponent, my best opponent. This is amazing fight for us. I hope it’s a big drama show,” Golovkin said following his weigh-in today. Golovkin tipped the scales at 159.6 lbs. Jacobs weighed 159.8. Golovkin looked like he was already at his fighting weight. That’s because he likely won’t rehydrate more than 5 pounds by the time he enters the ring on Saturday. In contrast, Jacobs is expected to come into the fight in the mid-170s. He looked rail thin today, and nothing like what he normally looks when he fights.
The start time for the Golovkin-Jacobs card is at 9:00 p.m. ET/6:00 p.m. PT. Where to see Golovkin vs. Jacobs is on HBO pay-per-view television. The cost of the fight is $54.95.
Despite today’s weigh-in taking place in the 29-year-old Jacobs’ home city of New York, a significant portion of the boxing fans that turned out to see today’s weigh-in were fans of Golovkin. That kind of tells you what kind of star attraction Golovkin is. When you have a fighter that has more boxing fans than the hometown guy, it means that he’s a big name. Golovkin didn’t have more fans in his last fight against British fighter Kell Brook in their fight in London, England last September. Brook had most of the boxing fans on his side at the weigh-in and during the fight. However, Golovkin still had a lot of the fans rooting for him, which is a rarity for visiting fighters to the UK.
The good news for the people that will be seeing the Golovkin-Jacobs fight live at MSG and on HBO PPV, they’re going to be seeing a match that will likely end in a knockout of one of these two fighters. Just which one is hard to determine. The boxing fans believe Golovkin will be the winner of the fight. He’s got a knockout streak of 23 opponent stretching back as far as 2008. Golovkin’s knockout streak is almost as long as Jacobs’ career. When you’ve knocked out that many fighters, it tells you that it’s not going to be easy to survive against him.
Golovkin knows how to KO his opponents no matter what they try and do to survive. Jacobs doesn’t just want to survive on Saturday. If all he wanted to do was survive, then he could possibly run around the ring and hold all night long to go the full 12. That would be a moral victory for Jacobs, but it wouldn’t further his career. He needs to beat Triple G for him to get future big payday fights against the likes of Saul Canelo Alvarez.
“Two guys, two dedicated knockout punches,” Jacobs said via espn.com. “You can’t get any better than this. We both are devastating punchers. We both have amazing skill.”
Both guys have the kind of power that can end the fight at a moment’s notice. The difference between them might be the chin of GGG. He’s never had problems taking the best power shots of his opponents. He took some criticism for taking 5 rounds to knockout welterweight Kell Brook last September, but he missed a lot of punches in that fight that would have likely been knockout blows if they had landed. Brook was fortunate that he was able to dodge a lot of the shots from Golovkin in rounds 1 through 4, because those punches had knockout written all over them if they’d connected.
The problem that Jacobs has is he’s not the same fighter when he’s being pressured compares to when he’s the one initiating the action. When Jacobs if forced into a brawl, his punching form breaks down, and so does his defense. He starts getting hit, and he’s not able to punch with the same kind of power that he does when he’s setting up his shots. Jacobs’ stamina is also an issue. He starts looking tired when he’s forced to brawl, and he gets tired very quickly in the first few rounds. In the fights where Jacobs has used movement around the ring, he’s not looked good. He does not seem capable of moving or any length of time without gassing out. That could be trouble for Jacobs on Saturday if he tries to evade Golovkin for long periods.
Jacobs can’t afford to get tired and lose the steam on his punches, because he’ll get taken out by Triple G. Golovkin has no reason to run from Jacobs. He’s going to be coming forward the entire time, and he’s not likely going to get tired in the same way.
“We going to show them why we’re the best in the world,” said Jacobs. “You’re going to see [me do] whatever it takes to win. I believe in myself. I’m not those guys [Golovkin has beaten]. My skill level is different. Nobody needs to believe in me but me.”
Jacobs is really down on the guys that Golovkin has fought in the past for some reason. Jacobs needs to just focus on not making the same mistakes as Golovkin’s past opponents rather that measuring himself above them. You can argue that many of the guys that Golovkin has fought in the past could take a shot better than Jacobs. They might not have been as fast as him in terms of hand speed or quite as talented, but it’s likely that more than a few of them could take punches better. Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez thinks David Lemieux has better punching power than Jacobs.
Jacobs says he’s going to do whatever it takes to win, but unless he’s going to start fouling Golovkin, he might not be able to do enough to get the victory. This isn’t a situation where Jacobs can will himself to win. All he can do is try and follow the different game plans that his trainers have come up with for him to use in the Golovkin fight. The fact that Jacobs moved his training camp to Virgil Hunter’s gym in Hayward, California suggests that he’s going to try and use different spoiling methods to beat Golovkin. Hunter is the trainer for light heavyweight champion Andre Ward. We just saw Ward use 10 rounds of wrestling and holding to beat Sergey Kovalev last November.
If Jacobs comes out with the same exact approach for the Golovkin fight tomorrow night, we could see a very odd looking fight. Golovkin would need to adapt to Jacobs’ wrestling and mauling if the referee isn’t going to do his job by taking points away from Jacobs. The reason why Jacobs might choose to hold and maul Golovkin for 12 rounds is because it was proven effective in his last defeat in 2004 to Russian Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov in the Olympics. Gaydarbekov was able to wrestle and fling Golovkin to the side frequently in that fight, and it worked in tiring him out, causing him to lose the fight. The referee should have taken points away from Gaydarbekov, but he opted not to.
If there’s a similar hands off referees that’s working the Golovkin-Jacobs fight this Saturday night, then Jacobs could turn the fight into a wrestling match and throw Golovkin around the ring like the Russian fighter did in 2004, and possibly win the fight. For Jacobs to use that approach to winning the fight, he really would be doing “whatever it takes to win” because he would be essentially fouling Golovkin if he turned the fight into a wrestling match instead of a boxing match. Jacobs has enough offensive skills to where he doesn’t need to use spoiling tactics to try and win the fight. Jacobs is fast enough, big enough and powerful enough to beat Golovkin if he can fight smart.
“Of course I feel that I have power, and it is very important to me, and I can feel the power in my punches,” Golovkin said. “I get that from hard work and practice … but it is not just power. It has a lot to do with timing and distance. It is not all in the punch.”
Hopefully, Jacobs doesn’t turn the fight into a roughhouse foul-fest on Saturday. It’s good that Jacobs wants to win, but this is boxing. If he decides he’s going to game the system by using a gimmick like holding excessively to try and win, the referee needs to step in and disqualify him if he can’t keep it clean.
The co-feature bout will see Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez (46-0, 38 KOs) defending his title against Srisaket Sor Rungvisai (41-4-1, 38 KOs). This is an important fight for Gonzalez because he needs to win the fight so that he can face Carlos Cuadras in a rematch. Gonzalez already beat Cuadras last September in an exciting fight. A lot of boxing fans want to see a rematch because the fight was such an exciting one. Cuadras was competitive with Gonzalez despite losing the fight. There are some boxing fans who believe Cuadras will beat Gonzalez in the rematch. If Gonzalez wins again, then the two fighters can close the chapter of their rivalry and move on. There would be no point in Cuadras and Gonzalez to fight for a third time if Gonzalez is going to keep winning.