By Dan Ambrose: WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin (28-0, 20 KO’s) sees WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (25-0, 22 KO’s) as just another one of the normal middleweight champions, and he doesn’t rank him as a high priority in terms of the fighters that he wants to take on.
Quillin says he prefers facing IBF champ Daniel Geale and WBC champ Sergio Martinez before he faces someone like Golovkin, according to fighthype.com. Quillin says he does want to fight Golovkin at some point but only after he’s made a name for himself by getting a few more fights under his before he faces him.
What’s really interesting is that Quillin sees himself as a well-known fighter in the United States, at least more so than Golovkin. Quillin believes his name has already been established despite the fact that he’s still pretty much an undercard fighter and not a main event guys.
Quillin might be a little better known than Golovkin in the U.S, but probably not nearly as much as he thinks. I don’t believe Quillin is a star, and in fact I believe he’s still far, far away from star status. He seems to be pretty much known only by hardcore boxing fans in the U.S, which is the same for Golovkin.
Quillin is right in wanting to fight Sergio Martinez more than Golovkin because there’s no doubt that Martinez is more popular than Golovkin in the U.S. But just because Geale is the Super World WBA 160 pound champion, that doesn’t mean he’s a better fighter than Golovkin. Quillin seems to have things twisted in his perception in judging Geale and Golovkin. Geale picked up the WBA Super World title by beating Felix Sturm, a fighter that Golovkin had been trying to fight for ages.
It looked like Sturm was avoiding the fight with the hard hitting Golovkin by choosing to fight other opponents over and over again. When Sturm was finally on the verge of being forced to fight Golovkin by the World Boxing Association, Sturm then chose to fight a unification bout with IBF champ Daniel Geale.
The WBA then allowed Sturm to bypass the Golovkin fight, because they give more weight to unification bouts than they do for the mandatory defenses. Sturm was then surprisingly beaten by Geale, which was arguably the much weaker option for Sturm than Golovkin. But Geale then was stripped of his WBA Super World title after choosing not to fight Golovkin and instead fight Anthony Mundine.
If Quillin thinks Geale is a higher ranked fighter than Golovkin right now, then he needs to look at the rankings because he’s no longer the WBA champ after being stripped and he’s now just the regular IBF champ.
It might be better for Quillin not to fight Golovkin because I don’t see that as a winnable fight for Quillin. I rate Golovkin as a much better fighter and I think he would give Quillin a real beat down and stop him if the fight were made, and I don’t think Quillin’s promoters will let him fight Golovkin.
Quillin will be defending his title on February 9th on the undercard of Danny Garcia vs. Zab Judah against fringe contender Fernando Guerrero (25-1, 19 KO’s) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
Comments are closed.