Dirrell: I seen a lot of flaws in Golovkin’s game

By Boxing News - 06/10/2015 - Comments

dirrell55665By Scott Gilfoid: Super middleweight Andre Dirrell says he saw flaws in WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s game in his recent fight against Willie Monroe Jr. Dirrell thinks that Golovkin has been cherry picking throughout his career and hasn’t faced a quality fighter yet after all these years.

Dirrell, who twice fought Golovkin during the time the two were in the amateur ranks, thinks that Golovkin has been taking it easy with the soft opposition he’s faced. Dirrell wants to see Golovkin in there with someone really good.

Dirrell doesn’t say specifically who he’d like to see Dirrell face, but we’re probably talking about someone like Miguel Cotto, Peter Quillin, Daniel Jacobs and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Those fights will come around eventually for Golovkin, and we’ll get to see if he’s for real or not.

“It was Willie Monroe who he fought,” Dirrell said via Fighthype. “I’m not saying Willie wasn’t a tough opponent; he just wasn’t a top opponent, so we have yet to see Gennady Golovkin get really tested yet, you know, but I seen a lot of flaws in that fight with Gennady.”

I think a lot of boxing fans and fighters saw the flaws in Golovkin’s game against Monroe. I mean, Golovkin was kind of exposed in that fight. He and his trainer Abel Sanchez said they were allowing Monroe to hang around in that fight, but I don’t believe that. I think Golovkin couldn’t hit Monroe with anything solid enough for him to get him out of there, and the fight ended up taking the wind out of Golovkin. In between rounds, Golovkin was gasping for breath, and it was pretty clear that he wasn’t accustomed to fighting at that kind of pace. Monroe made the mistake of not using movement in the 5th and 6th rounds to keep Golovkin out of range.

“He shows hunger in knocking his opponent out and that creates so many flaws, man,” Dirrell said. “Gennady Golovkin, he’s a tough cookie; will walk you down. When he slips, he slips forward. He doesn’t slip back or have to start over. His head is always forward; he’s always slipping.”

Dirrell didn’t say whether he’d be interested in facing Golovkin at the pro level, but my guess is he’d really like a chance at facing the Kazakhstan star so that he could get a chance to expose him. The two of them fight in different divisions, but there’s much difference between them in terms of size. Dirrell has put on a lot of weight recently for some reason, and he needs to slim down again like he used to be when he was fighting in the Super Six tournament.

Golovkin is going to get tested when he eventually faced the likes of Canelo and Cotto in the future. For Golovkin’s sake, you have to hope that he doesn’t have to wait years before he gets a crack at those guys because then fans will never know what would have happened if he fought them while he was in his prime. But from the looks of it, I think Canelo and Cotto are waiting Golovkin out until he gets older and isn’t in his prime any longer.



Comments are closed.