By Allan Fox: Daniel Jacobs (33-2, 29 KOs) still hasn’t let go of his belief that he deserved a decision win over middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin last year, and now he believes he can lock himself in for rematch against the Kazakhstan fighter if he beats Maciej Sulecki (26-0, 10 KOs) in their WBA middleweight title eliminator this Saturday night on HBO at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
(Photo credit: Ed Mulholland/MatchroomBoxingUSA)
Jacobs lost a 12 round unanimous decision to Golovkin in March 2017 by the scores in his hometown of New York by the scores 114-113, 115-112 and 115-112. The scoring by the judges were very kind to Jacobs, who appeared to lose by an 8 rounds to 4 score.
Golovkin knocked Jacobs down in the 4th round, so the scores should have been much wider. Jacobs appeared to lose the first 6 rounds of the fight. From that point on, it was a no brainer that Jacobs was going to lose the fight. He was too timid, and even when he tried to make a fight of it in the second half, he wasn’t aggressive enough. Golovkin had Jacobs hurt in the 10th and close to a knockout.
Had the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight taken place in Southern California, it’s quite possible the score would have been lopsided in GGG’s favor. Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler gave Jacobs a huge break by agreeing to fight him in New York in front of his fans. That was a mistake on Golovkin’s part to agree to do that, because he gave Jacobs an advantage.
Golovkin is going to have to stop giving his opponents advantages by fighting in front of their own fans unless he plans on trying to knock them out. Golovkin didn’t try and knock Jacobs out. He boxed him just like he did with Saul Canelo Alvarez, and he counted on the judges to do their job properly. They did give Golovkin the victory, but they had the fight much too close from what actually took place inside the ring on the night. At best, Jacobs won 4 rounds, and many of those rounds were close and could have Golovkin’s way.
Jacobs says he’s not looking past the 28-year-old Sulecki, but with the way he’s been talking constantly about a rematch with Golovkin this week, it appears that’s what he’s doing. Jacobs is assuming he’s going to beat Sulecki. If obviously helps that Jacobs’ promoter Eddie Hearn selected Sulecki from the 154 lb. division to fight in the WBA middleweight title eliminator instead of a top fighter from the 160 lb. weight class like Jermall Charlo.
Golovkin, 36, has received a great deal of heat from the boxing fans for picking junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan as his replacement opponent for his fight on May 5 at the StubHub Center in Carson, California, but his team only had 3 weeks to find an opponent. Jacobs’ management had plenty of time to pick out a better opponent from the 160 lb. weight class, and yet they picked a junior middleweight to fight in Sulecki. What does that tell you?
Hearn only recently signed Jacobs to his promotional team. In the first fight with him, Hearn matched Jacobs against fringe level contender Luis Arias. Jacobs won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision last November, but it was a boring fight because he wasn’t going after him. Jacobs boxed Arias for 12 rounds just like he did against Golovkin.
“If we win impressively and become the WBA mandatory challenger, to take on Golovkin so we will be like two bulls attacking each other,” Jacobs said to skysports.com. “I truly believe that I won the fight with ‘GGG’ but the judges saw it differently. I would come forward and be the aggressor more in a rematch,” Jacobs said about Golovkin.
Jacobs needs to stand his ground and fight Sulecki, because he’s going to look bad if he runs from him like he did against Golovkin and like he did at times in the Arias fight. Hugo Centeno Jr. tried to keep Sulecki off by using movement in their fight in 2016, but I didn’t work. Sulecki cut off the ring on him and stopped him in the 10th round.
It would be in Jacobs’ best interest to be aggressive at all times with Sulecki to try and score an early knockout, because if he can’t do that, it might be a real disaster for him. Sulecki will put hands on Jacobs and force him to run like he did against GGG. Jacobs keeps saying he’s the best middleweight in the division, but unfortunately he doesn’t fight like he’s the best.
If Jacobs runs from Sulecki, it’s going to make it hard for him to continue to say he’s the best middleweight. The best middleweight in the division wouldn’t run from a fighter picked out from the 154 lb. weight class by his new promoter Hearn to try and become the WBA mandatory the easy way. It’s the World Boxing Association that gave the green light to Jacobs fighting a junior middleweight in their WBA title eliminator. They should have ordered Jacobs to fight the unbeaten Demetrius Andrade instead of Sulecki.
“I am the best middleweight in the world and it’s now up to me to prove it,” Jacobs said. “We’ll see if he [Sulecki] can take my shots.”
Jacobs needs to stay in the pocket and not back off after he throws his shots, because he was doing that all the time in his last two fights against Luis Arias and Golovkin. Jacobs needs to put his shots together against Sulecki, because he fights like he’s having flashbacks to his 5th round knockout loss to Dmitry Pirog in 2010. Before Jacobs was knocked out by Pirog, he used to go after his opponents the way Golovkin does to knock them out right away. But after Jacobs lost to Pirog, he’s been timid, even against weak punchers, and he’s not looked like the same fighter that he once was.
I suspect that Jacobs will start off aggressively in the opening round on Saturday night, but once he starts getting hit hard by Sulecki’s clubbing shots in close, he’ll get on his bike and run from the Polish fighter to keep from getting knocked out. I see this fight as being a replay of the Golovkin-Jacobs fight. I don’t see Jacobs having enough courage to stand and trade with Sulecki.
Jacobs is at his best when he’s outside of the ring giving interviews, taking about himself in bold terms, and painting an unrealistic picture of how his fights are going to be. Unfortunately, Jacobs fights nothing like the way he talks. He’s a very cautious fighter, who is quick to get on his bike and peddle away at the first hint of aggression from his opponents.