(Photo credit: Naoki Fakuda) By Dan Ambrose: Abel Sanchez, the trainer for World Boxing Association (WBA) Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (30-0, 27 KOs) doesn’t think much of challenger Marco Antonio Rubio’s 51 knockouts on his 59-6-1, 51 KO record.
Sanchez notes that those knockouts didn’t come against guys that were at the same talent level that Golovkin has. Rubio has scored a lot of knockouts, but against much weaker B, C and D level opposition during his long career. Rubio has had a lot of record-padding fights throughout his 14-year pro career, and he’s rarely mixed it up with really high quality opposition.
“Those 51 knockouts didn’t come against anyone Gennady’s level,” Sanchez said to esnewsreporting.com. “He [Robert Garcia] can’t change him in a couple of months or even 3 or 4 fights. All he can do is get him in great shape which I know he will. He coaches him in a way that will make Marco believe, and I think that’s Robert’s plan,” Sanchez said.
Rubio has been saying that he plans on being more cautious for this fight. He wants to be aggressive, but his focus is on being smart about it. Unfortunately for Rubio, he doesn’t have the huge one-punch power that Golovkin has. Rubio’s power is the type where he needs to stand in front of his opponents and bomb them out by throwing a lot of big shots.
If he’s going to fight tentatively against Golovkin then this could lead to Rubio not landing enough punches to be competitive. He could end up getting picked apart by Golovkin’s much harder single shots.
Golovkin says he fights in the “Mexican style”, but if you watch his fights, he doesn’t really sit in the pocket and exchange the way great Mexican fighters like Julio Cesar Chavez Sr did or even Chavez Jr. Golovkin doesn’t throw as many body punches as those guys, because it would require him to get hit a lot more.
Instead, Golovkin focuses on being careful when throwing his single shots and occasional combinations. If you watch how he used to fight before he started training with Abel Sanchez in 2010, he’s not much different than how he previously fought. The only difference I can see is Golovkin throws occasional body shots now.
Rubio is out of his element in this fight. If he doesn’t fight the way he normally does by applying constant pressure then he stands even less of a chance of winning. The only way Rubio can beat Golovkin is if he gets him in a dog fight and somehow catches him with a shot that stuns him. If Rubio can buzz Golovkin with a shot then there’s a possibility he can then pour it on to score a knockout at some point in the fight.
This will be the first time in Golovkin’s pro career that he’s fought anyone with a “Mexican style” of fighting, and there’s a slight chance he could struggle especially with the body shots that Rubio will be landing.
The longer the fight goes the better it is for Rubio, because he could wear Golovkin down. I doubt it’ll happen, but we’ve seen Rubio do this in the past against David Lemieux. Rubio even wore Chavez Jr down to and beat him up a little to a certain extent even though he wound up losing that fight by a 12 round decision.
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