By Dan Ambrose: WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (31-0, 28 KOs) wasted little time of dispatching challenger Marco Antonio Rubio (59-7-1, 51 KOs) last Saturday night in taking him out in two blistering rounds in front of 9,323 boxing fans at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Golovkin hit Rubio with a left hook to the head that dropped him for the 10 count. The stoppage was so sudden and unexpected that it led to many of the StubHub Center fans booing the end, because they wanted to see the fight continued.
The problem was Rubio didn’t have the punch resistance or the defense to make it a decent fight of it. I’m sure the loss of 15 pounds of weight the two days before the fight didn’t help Rubio’s punch resistance any.
HBO commentator Roy Jones Jr was impressed by the knockout, but he also feels that it could lead to Golovkin have problems getting the big names like Miguel Cotto, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to want to get in the ring with Golovkin. They obviously know now that a fight against Golovkin would be a big pay-per-view affair due to the huge amount of interest his mismatch against Rubio generated last night, but at the same time it’s likely not an appealing thing for them to want to risk having their careers reduced to rubble by Golovkin in getting knocked out the way Rubio did.
“This don’t make it attractive for those guys because this guy [Golovkin] looks like a monster, a killing machine,” Jones Jr said to HBO. Golovkin is like “a young middleweight Mike Tyson. He’s a guy who just destroys who they put in front of him,” Jones Jr said. “So these guys aren’t going to be knocking on his door to get in the ring in front of Gennady Golovkin, believe me. I think if we get a big name like Miguel Cotto, he [Golovkin] could cross over and become a pay-per-view guy.”
It’s hard to disagree with Jones Jr’s comparison of Golovkin to Mike Tyson. Golovkin is knocking out guys in the same way that Tyson was during the early part of his career, and he’s got guys just as hesitant to fight him as Tyson had the top fighters not wanting to fight him in the early part of his career.
Golovkin is one fight away from becoming a pay-per-view guys, but there’s a good chance that he may not get any of the big names to fight him. With guys like Canelo, it’s not just him making the decisions on who he fights. Golden Boy Promotions has a lot of say so too. As we’ve seen in the past, Golden Boy president Oscar De La Hoya wasn’t in favor of Canelo fighting Erislandy Lara and Austin Trout. You’d have to think that if De La Hoya wasn’t green lighting those fights, he sure isn’t going to green light a fight between Canelo and Golovkin. I don’t see that happening.
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