Bernstein: Golovkin vs. Ishida is a stupid fight!

By Boxing News - 02/10/2013 - Comments

golovkin222By Dan Ambrose: Boxing analyst Al Berstein doesn’t care too much for the March 30th fight between WBA World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (25-0, 22 KO’s) and the unranked Nobuhiro Ishida (24-8-2, 9 KO’s) at the Chapiteau de Fontvieille, Monte Carlo, Monaco. Bernstein thinks the 30-year-old Golovkin should be taking on much better opposition at this point in his career instead of facing a guy that has lost his last two fights in 37-year-old Ishida.

Bernstein said to Boxing Channel “That’s [Golovkin-Ishida] a stupid fight. We’ve not seen Gennady Golovkin against a top middleweight yet. Eventually he’s going to run out of 154 pounders to fight, and you might want to fight a 160 pounder. I think Golovkin still has to prove himself. I know a lot of people think of him as a superstar already, but he’s not. Even though he’s 30, he’s a potential superstar. I think this fight is a waste. It’s not going to enhance Golovkin at all.”

The problem is, and I think Bernstein is probably aware of this, nobody really wants to fight Golovkin in the middleweight division. If you look at the top fighters in the division such as Sergio Martinez, Peter Quillin, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Felix Sturm, and Daniel Geale, none of them are looking to fight Golovkin.

Golovkin wants to fight them, but they’re either busy or just not interested in facing him. Golovkin has a big problem with him being too risky for his own good. If he had a bigger name then these guys obviously would be interested in facing him because they would then at least get a nice payday in taking this risky fight, but they’re not going to do it against a guy that most casual boxing fans don’t know.

With those top fighters off the table, Golovkin has had to stay busy in fights against the likes of Gabriel Rosado and Grzegorz Proksa. The Ishida fight is just more of the same. Golovkin is just staying busy, hoping that one of the big named fighters will suddenly show interest in fighting him. I don’t see it happening anytime soon unfortunately. Golovkin is going to have to keep fighting these types of fighters until he’s better known and has more fans.



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