By Dan Ambrose: WBC interim middleweight champion Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KOs) plans on using every trick in the book to try and defeat WBS middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs) in their fight on October 18th at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Rubio, 34, and his trainer Robert Garcia are going to come into the fight with a number of different battle plans they hope will work. If one doesn’t work, they plan on abandoning it and trying something else out until something does finally work.
Rubio has the power and the size to be competitive, but the question does he have the hand speed and chin. He’s been stopped before in a loss to Kelly Pavlik in 2009. Rubio was outgunned in that fight and he had to quit otherwise he would have gone out on his shield.
“The plan will be to work very hard in the gym, obviously,” Rubio said. “We have to use many tactics, not just one; either jab or feint, but we have to use everything that exists in boxing to automatically win against a machine like him. Most important thing here is going to be the strength and conditioning.”
Rubio went on to say that he’s learned from his losses to Pavlik and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in the past, and he plans on using the things that he learned from those losses to defeat Golovkin. Those are much different fighters than Golovkin, however, so it’s hard to see how Rubio’s losses will help him defeat Golovkin. If anything, Rubio could use what he learned from those fights to defeat similar fighters.
Rubio’s lack of hand speed could be a factor that causes him problems against the hard hitting Golovkin. It’s good that Rubio is taller than Golovkin and has good punching power, but Rubio’s slow hand speed and upright fighting style is going to put him at the mercy of Golovkin in this fight.
If Golovkin doesn’t beat Rubio too badly, Rubio will come out of the fight okay. After all, he’s fighting the guy that is considered by far to be the best fighter in the middleweight division in the eyes of a lot of boxing fans. But if Rubio gets annihilated, then it’ll be bad for hm, because he’s got to make the fight competitive.
Comments are closed.