By Stanley White: Daniel Jacobs (33-2, 29 KOs) says he now knows how to beat IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs), and he feels he will deal him his first defeat of his career when the two of them get around to facing each other in a rematch.
Jacobs believes the way to beat the 35-year-old Golovkin is to pressure him hard from the first round, and make sure that the early rounds are won. Jacobs figures that with his hand speed advantage, he’ll beat Golovkin in the rematch without problems. Jacobs says Golovkin is like an “old dog” that can’t lean new tricks inside the ring. Pressuring Golovkin from the start of the fight while he’s still fresh could be dangerous for Jacobs. It means he would have to open himself up to getting hit a lot more than he did in the first.
Golovkin beat Jacobs last March by a close but convincing 12 round unanimous decision on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York. Jacobs has a hard time dealing with the defeat, telling the boxing media and fans repeatedly that he should have been given the decision. Jacobs couldn’t get past Golovkin’s power jab for most of the fight. Even in the second half of the contest, in which the judges gave Jacobs 5 of the last 6 rounds, he was repeatedly stopped from coming forward by Golokin’s jab. Jacobs was lucky to get so many of the later rounds, as he didn’t appear to win 5 of the last 6 rounds. Jacobs looked like he 3 out of the last 6. Jacobs was hurt in the 10th, and the judge still gave him the round.
Jacobs may get his chance to try and beat Golovkin in 2018. Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler needs a good Plan-B option in case he’s unable to get the rematch for him against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez on May 5. Jacobs would be the ideal opponent for Golovkin to fight if he’s not already booked up with an opponent for the first half of 2018.
“That was a 50-50 fight, and I win the rematch, 100-percent,” said Jacobs to Premier Boxing Champions via RingTV.com about his March 18 fight with GGG. “I know how to fight this guy now, with no hesitancy because I’ve already experienced his best, and I’m still learning at 30 years old. But he’s an older guy, and it’s tough to teach and old dog new tricks,” said Jacobs.
Jacobs will likely get a chance to fight the winner of the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight at some point. It might not happen in 2018. It depends on whether Canelo and Triple G fight in May and September. If they fight each other two times next year, it would mean that Jacobs, 30, will need to wait until 2019 to get a chance to fight the eventual winner of those fights.
It would be in Jacobs’ best interest to start fighting better opposition. He’s being matched too softly most of the time, and it doesn’t help him land the fights he wants when he’s constantly fighting weaker opponents. Jacobs signed recently with Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn, who was supposed to start matching him against good fighters. Instead, Jacobs fought little known fringe contender Luis Arias in a mismatch that always meant to be a mismatch. The fight was one the moment the contract was signed. Arias had no experience had little experience, very little power, and inadequate weight to be fighting a middleweight the size of Jacobs. Luis Arias’ trainer John David Jackson said after the fight that he believed that Jacobs had rehydrated to cruiserweight for the fight. He estimated that Jacobs weighed over 180 pounds on the night of the fight. Jacobs said that he weighed only 174 pounds. However, that’s difficult to believe, because that’s close to what Golovkin weighed in his fight with Jacobs, and he looked much lighter than him.
If Jacobs can’t get a fight with Triple G in the first quarter of 2018, he would do well to fight someone like Jermall Charlo, Sergiy Derevyanchenko, Tureano Johnson or Demetrius Andrade. One of those guys would be the ideal opponent for Jacobs to fight to gain the attention of the hardcore boxing fans. However, it’s unlikely that Jacobs’ new promoter Eddie Hearn will put him in with those fighters. They’re dangerous for him. One guy that could be an option for Jacobs is former WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (35-3-1, 24 KOs). He’s already said that he would like to fight Jacobs. Lee hasn’t done much with his career in the last 2 years unfortunately. The 33-year-old southpaw Lee lost to Billy Saunders in December 2015. Lee then took all of 2016 off from boxing. He returned earlier this year to defeat KeAndrae Leatherwood by an 8 round unanimous. Lee looked very rusty in that fight, and far from impressive. It’s unclear why he hasn’t fought since then. Lee would still be a dangerous opponent for Jacobs to fight, because he sometimes has problems with hard punchers. GGG had Jacobs hurt twice in their fight and he wasn’t sitting down on his shots.
It’s hard to knock out GGG, but we already know I have the speed advantage,” said Jacobs. I need to be more aggressive from the start. If I apply a little more aggression, stand my ground and keep his jab accuracy to a minimum, I win a decision.”
Jacobs thinks he can get out of the way of Golovkin’s jab. It’s questionable whether Jacobs can do that. He doesn’t have the arm length to stand on the outside and beat Golovkin in a jabbing contest. Jacobs was at his best last time against GGG when he was at medium distance. In other words, well within the range of Golovkin’s power jab. Golovkin will land his jab if Jacobs is going to try and walk him down and beat him with combination punching.
Jacobs walked into a lot of power shots from Golovkin in the second half of the fight. If Jacobs is going to change his fighting style for the rematch, he could get hit a lot more. Jacobs acknowledges that he’s probably not going to be able to knockout Golovkin, which means he’s going to get hit a lot of times if he stays in the pocket and fights him for a full 12 round fight.
“I really feel that I executed the game-plan and gave myself a two-round edge in the scoring, but it comes down to how the judges score the rounds,” Jacobs said. “Golovkin was known as the power-puncher, and they like aggressive fighters. At worst it should have been a draw.”
It looked to this writer like Jacobs lost the fight to Golovkin. Jacobs gave away 5 of the first 6 rounds of the contest by fighting in a fearful manner. There was a knockdown that Golovkin scored in the 4th round. In the second half of the fight, Golovkin appeared to win 3 of the rounds. But even with the judges giving Jacobs 5 of the last 6 rounds, it means he still won only 6 rounds, and that wasn’t enough for him to be given the decision due to the knockdown in round 4.
Jacobs needs to show that he’s for real as a viable opponent for the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin fight by taking on and beating some good opponents while he waits on them. Jacobs is now signed with HBO Boxing, so his fights are going to be televised on their network. It would be a shame if Jacobs is going to fight nothing but mediocre fringe contenders on HBO while calling out Golovkin and Canelo. HBO isn’t getting a good deal out of Jacobs being on their network if they’re going to green light mismatches between him and guys like Luis Arias. HBO needs to be the watchdog for the type of fights that they present to the boxing public. Jacobs-Arias was bad television. Jacobs needs to do better than that, and HBO can make sure of that by letting him know the type of opponents they’re interested in televising.