By Dan Ambrose: If anyone has a chance of lasting the full 12 rounds against IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (32-0, 29 KOs), it’s #2 IBF Willie Monroe (19-1, 6 KOs). He’s got the defensive skills and the mobility to give the power punching Golovkin fits. Monroe also has the ability to survive if that becomes his plan-B option if things aren’t going right for him this Saturday night in their fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
Monroe obviously wants the victory against Golovkin, but if he finds out early on that he doesn’t have the talent to match-up with the Kazakhstan fighter, you can bet that he’s going to look to slip into the survival mode in order to get out of the fight without getting knocked out.
Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez sees the southpaw Monroe as a very slick fighter capable of giving Golovkin a lot of problems, but he doesn’t the American fighter will be able to go the full 12 round distance. Somewhere along the line, Monroe will make a mistake and when that happens, Golovkin is going to pounce on him and take him out with some hard shots.
“Like I said in the past, I don’t think anybody at 160 pounds stays with Gennady for 12 full rounds,” Sanchez said to ESPN.com. “Murray almost proved me wrong but I don’t think that Willie will. First of all, he’s a slick guy and a slick fighter that moves around a lot. He is a southpaw. He may not possess the kind of power that Gennady does, but he’s still a southpaw.”
Monroe’s ability to move around a lot will pose a new kind of challenge for Golovkin because most of the guys that he’s faced during his career were there to be hit. His last opponent Martin Murray used a lot of movement, but he was slow on his feet due to his huge size. Murray looked like a small cruiserweight by the time he rehydrated for the fight. It’s not easy for a fighter in the upper 170s to move for 12 rounds, and that’s what Murray had to do in order to make it to the 12th round.
Golovkin’s best chance of scoring a knockout is if he can trap Monroe against the ropes and land a big shot to the head to stun him. When Monroe is in the center of the ring, he’s going to be very difficult to hit to the way he maintains his range and his head. He’s a very defensive fighter, and that poses a difficult challenge for Golovkin to try and solve. Sanchez says that he doesn’t care if Golovkin’s knockout string ends on Saturday. He just wants Golovkin to get the victory so that he can move on towards the bigger fights like Peter Quillin, Andy Lee, Daniel Jacobs, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Miguel Cotto. If the knockout comes, it comes, Sanchez says.
Golovkin’s likely best chance of hurting Monroe in this fight is if he aims his punches at the torso. He’s probably not going to have much success to land his punches to the head of Monroe because he’s going to be leaning backwards a lot of the time and moving. But his midsection will be there for Golovkin to land his shots all night long. However, Golovkin is going to get hit when he throws to Monroe’s body because he’s going to catch Golovkin coming in, and likely counter him each time he throws a shot. But that’s just going to be one of the sacrifices that Golovkin will need to make in order to get the stoppage in this fight.
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