Responding to a challenge from once-beaten heavyweight prospect Mike Mollo (19-1, 12 KOs), the often-troubled Andrew Golota (40-6-1, 33 KOs) has agreed to face him on January 19ths, at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Their fight will take place on the undercard of Roy Jones Jr. vs. Felix Trinidad, and perhaps may eclipse that bout in excitement. Mollo, 27, a fighter often compared to Mike Tyson, recently steopped Art Binkowski in the 2nd round on October 13th. Mollo hits very hard, and tends to overwhelm his opponents in the first couple of rounds, bombing them out with hooks and uppercuts. His one lone blemish is a 4th round TKO to the heard-punching DaVarryl Williamson, in May 2006.
Mollo also has a notable win over Kevin McBride, whom he flattened in the 2nd round in October 2006. Unfortunately, the rest of Mollo’s opponents are far less impressive with most of the C-level. Mollo’s one big flaw – make that two big flaws – is his lack of defense and height. He stands only 6’0″, and because of that he’s forced to come inside on his taller opponents. His defense is mostly nonexistent, perhaps because he’s so busy focusing on taking his opponents out in the early rounds.
Mollo has been able to take away with his limitations because of he poor opposition, but he’ll have to make some big changes once he steps it up against better opponents. It’s unclear whether Golota still has enough left, at 39, to mount a serious challenge on Mollo. Since making a boxing comeback in 2003 – after stepping away from the ring for three years – Golota has lost much of his handspeed, in particular recently.
He still hits hard, but he depends on an opponent to stand directly in front of him to make this happen. Mollo will be there for him to hit, but it’s potentially a bad matchup for Golota, because Mollo’s fighting style is very similar to Lamon Brewster and Tyson, both of which stopped Golota in the early rounds with an all out blitz. In his last bout, Golota stopped a badly and out shape Kevin McBride in the 6th round in October.
However, Golota was rocked in the 1st round by a slow right hand by McBride, and if the Irish fighter hadn’t tired himself out, he could have easily have stopped Golota in the 1st round. It’s wasn’t an impressive performance by Golota, but if you look at him, he seemed really pleased with how he’d fought and was almost oblivious to how bad he had looked.