By Allan Fox: Making his first appearance in over a year and half former middleweight contender Daniel Jacobs (23-1, 20 KO’s) destroyed an over-matched Josh Luteran (13-2, 9 KO’s) by a 1st round knockout last Saturday night at the Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, New York.
Jacobs, 25, hurt Luteran with a hard right hand followed by a quick left-right combination that knocked him out. Luteran was badly hurt when the back of his head bounced off the canvas as a result of the knockdown.
Although Jacobs looked good, he appeared rusty, tentative and easy to hit. He didn’t look anything close to where he was at during his best part of his career in 2009.
Is what a good win for Jacobs, but this is still just the beginning of his comeback and it’s hard to say how far he can go in the game. Jacobs has been out of action since March of last year due to a serious medical problem that he had. Jacobs had a tumor that had wrapped itself around his spine. He was told that he would never be able to fight again. However, doctors were able to remove the tumor with surgery and chemotherapy.
Before Jacobs developed the medical problem, he was stopped by Dmitry Pirog two years ago in a 5th round TKO. That was a pretty one-sided fight and Jacobs looked confused in how to deal with Pirog’s style. Not long before this fight, Jacobs had struggled to beat Ishe Smith in a 10 round decision. Smith staggered Jacobs and gave him a lot of problems.
Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer said at the post fight press conference last night that he believes that Jacobs will win a world title in the future. However, I have my doubts that he’ll be able to do this unless Golden Boy matches Jacobs very carefully to keep him away from punchers. He does well against guys without power but historically, Jacobs has struggled when put in with guys that can bang a bit. This was the case when he was fighting in the amateur ranks and as we saw in his fights against Pirog and Smith, it’s still the case.
As long as Golden Boy keeps Jacobs away from these fighters he might be okay:
Gennady Golovkin
Julio Cesar Chavez Jr
Sergio Martinez
Dmitriy Pirog
Peter Quillin
Marco Antonio Rubio
David Lemieux
Andy Lee
Martin Murray
Jacobs could possibly beat IBF/WBA champion Daniel Geale if Golden Boy can weasel a fight from him, but I don’t think Jacobs could hold down the title for long. As soon as he faces his first puncher he’ll likely get stopped.
What Jacobs needs to do is move down to 154 because his power would be even better at that weight and there’s not nearly as many punchers at this weight compared to at middleweight.
Jacobs said after the fight “They told me I could never box again. I proved them wrong, and I gave a great show…I am back!”
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