First lets take a look at the current middleweight landscape. We have one champion who stands atop of the current pile, but is the wrong side of 30, one so-called world champion who just unified two of the alphabet belts, only to not fight his mandatory and be stripped of the WBA title. Now why would a unified world champion give up a belt they had fought for, for most of their lives for without a fight?
Now I know everybody is going to say Gennady Golovkin (24-0, 21 KO’s) isn’t a big enough draw. He has only had one fight in America on HBO etc. The simple fact off the matter is that Daniel Geale didn’t want to fight Golovkin.
We can speculate as to the reason why this is, but at the end of the day most hardcore boxing fans know why. It is the same reason Golovkin could possibly end up facing a six foot four inch super middleweight in his next fight. Golovkin looked scary in his last fight, picking an over-matched Gregorz Proksa apart in 5 rounds. This was a performance I was VERY impressed with; not the punches that finished Proksa but the way they were set up; bone-shattering left hooks to the liver, thudding straight right hands and right hooks were brought seamlessly together in combination, great footwork above average hand speed and a great chin make Golovkin the OFFENSIVE force of 160.
Not to mention the guy spars with light-heavyweights, cruiserweights and even heavyweights, and the word on the web is Golovkin more than holds his own during these sessions. This leads to my final rhetorical question…. Who at 160 is going to stop Golovkin’s rise?
I don’t see Sergio Martinez fighting at the elite level much longer as he is closer to 40 than 50, and if former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, an under-trained semi-skilled prima-donna who was smoking cannabis before their fight, can hurt him I have no doubt that Golovkin could not only hurt him but stop him. WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin isn’t ready as his last fight showed us, as, knock downs aside, it was a pretty close fight. What do you guys think?
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