By Allan Fox: IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs) has the wrong opponent in Willie Monroe Jr. (19-1, 6 KOs) for him to look good against this Saturday night in their fight on HBO at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
While he made not want to admit it, Golovkin, 33, has a lot of pressure on him to look good in beating the 28-year-old Monroe in this fight. Golovkin is trying to make a case that he deserves fights against bigger stars like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Miguel Cotto and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
The only that Golovkin can show fans that he deserves a fight against any of those fighters is for him to keep knocking everyone out, fighting frequently, and looking good in each fight. Golovkin is at a huge disadvantage in trying to get the bigger names to fight him like Canelo and Cotto because he doesn’t have a ready-made huge fan base that will automatically fall in behind him in the United States.
Golovkin has to earn a fan base the hard way, and that requires for him to do more than what we’re seeing from Canelo, Cotto and Mayweather. That’s why Golovkin’s fight against Monroe is so important on Saturday. Golovkin absolutely has to look good in this fight and he has to score a knockout for him to keep the pressure on Canelo, Cotto and Mayweather to fight him.
The problem is that Monroe is one of the most difficult fighters in the middleweight division to fight due to his southpaw stance and his slick fighting style. Monroe can do a lot of the same things that Mayweather can do in terms of ring movement. If Monroe decides he’s not going to let Golovkin land anything in this fight, he’s going to be able to do that. It wouldn’t be surprising if Golovkin’s connect percentage in this fight is in the low 20s because Monroe is not going to let him get his shots off.
Monroe has looked really good lately with his wins over Brian Vera, Brandon Adams, Vitaliy Kopylenko, and Donatas Bondorovas. He beat those guys and dominated each of them. Adams and Vera are good fighters, and Monroe was able to dominate them with no troubles at all. What were really impressive about Monroe’s performances against those guys were his defensive skills. He shot them down completely on offense to where they weren’t landing anything. Monroe didn’t need great offensive skills to beat them because he did such a great job of limiting what they were able to do on offense.
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