By Allan Fox: Daniel Jacobs failed to show at today’s IBF mandated same day weigh-in for his fight against Gennady “GGG” Golovkin tonight at Madison Square Garden in New York. The IBF will not be available for Jacobs to win tonight due to him failing to show up at the weigh-in today. Jacobs can still win Golovkin’s IBO, WBA and WBC titles. Winning those titles would be a big deal for Jacobs, because it could lead to a big money fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez or a rematch with Golovkin. It would be life changing money for Jacobs.
It looks like Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) has made a choice to not try and keep his weight lower so that he can use his size to beat Golovkin by being the heavier fighter inside the ring. Just how much heavier Jacobs comes into the fight tonight with Triple G will interesting to see. Golovkin is close to 170 right now, which is a normal weight for him on the day of his fights. If Jacobs rehydrates to over 180, he’ll have a 10+ lb. weight advantage. That might not be enough to give him a real advantage.
Jacobs would probably need to rehydrate to 185 lbs. to have an advantage that would make it hard for Golovkin. That’s a lot of weight for Jacobs to be carrying around in a fight. If Jacobs put 25 pounds of water weight back on in just 24 hours, he’s very likely going to be sluggish in the second half of the fight. That might explain why Jacobs’ power seems to diminish after round 6 in his fights. Jacobs gets a lot of his knockouts early.
With the International Boxing Federation’s 10 pound limit for what fighters can rehydrate, it’s quite possible that Jacobs’s weight was more than the limit. Jacobs weighed in at 174 lbs. for the 30-day weigh-in, and that might be close to where he is at today after he rehydrated. At last Friday’s weigh-in, Jacobs weighed in at 159.8 pounds.
Golovkin weighed in at a rehydrated weight of 169.6 lbs. today. This is 10 lbs. heavier than what Golovkin weighed in at on Friday’s weigh-in. Some boxing fans might speculate that Jacobs failed to show because his weight could be higher than Golovkin’s and possibly close to 180.
Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez has already said that he thinks Jacobs is making a mistake by coming into the fight so heavy. Sanchez thinks that Jacobs would have been better off being lighter and quicker so that he could move around the ring with agility to avoid getting trapped by Golovkin. He thinks that the heavy weight that Jacobs will be carrying around will make him slow and sluggish for the fight.
The Golovkin and Jacobs fight will be shown on HBO pay-per-view television tonight. The fight sells for $54.95 on HBO.
Team Golovkin didn’t push for a rehydration limit for Jacobs for the fight to keep him from blowing up into the 180s. In hindsight, they probably should have insisted on a rehydration limit of at least 175 lbs. It might a problem for Golovkin if Jacobs walks into the ring tonight at 185 to 190, because he would be enjoying a tremendous weight advantage of 15-20 lbs. That kind of weight would help Jacobs in the early rounds, but it might not be a benefit for him if the fight goes beyond 6.
We don’t know what Jacobs’ game plan is for the fight. He could use his weight advantage to maul Golovkin for 12 rounds by holding him and wrestling like Andre Ward did against Sergey Kovalev. As heavy as Jacobs is, he’s either going to try and blitz Golovkin early by using his size to try and power him out of there, or he’s going to take the fight to the inside and try and wrestle him for 6-8 rounds to wear him down. That approach will require that the referee just stands and does nothing about the holding by Jacobs. If the referee is doing his job, he’ll take points away from Jacobs for that tactic. But it’s rare to see referees stopping a fighter from using prolonged holding.
“We know he can punch. We know what he did in the Peter Quillin fight,” said Sanchez to IFL TV about Jacobs. “We know we have a fight in front of us. Daniel Jacobs is called the ‘Miracle Man’, and there’s a possibility of him upsetting the applecart. We hope he’s the kid he shows on paper. We hope the fans are treated to a good fight, and I hope we come out victorious. Danny’s got a heck of a chance,” said Sanchez.
Golovkin needs a win over Jacobs tonight to stay on course for a fight against WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders in June, and Canelo in September. If Jacobs wins, he can possibly get one or both of those fights. There would also be a chance for a rematch against Golovkin if he can’t get either of those fighters to agree to face him.
“If Triple G takes the same punches he took against Kell Brook, it’s going to be very interesting,” said Stephen Smith of ESPN’s First Take. “He’s going against a legitimate middleweight, not a welterweight,” said Smith.
“Daniel Jacobs has real power,” said Max Kellerman. “Kell Brook is not a full middleweight with power like Daniel Jacobs. What we’ve seen from Jacobs is he has power, especially early in his fights. When he gets a guy hurt like he did Kid Chocolate, he jumps on them and takes them out of there. This is an explosive middleweight match-up,” said Kellerman.