Golovkin wants De La Hoya, fight would be at 154

By Boxing News - 06/23/2015 - Comments

golovkin64By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) says that he’ll take the fight with 42-year-old Oscar De La Hoya, and that he’ll take the fight “immediately” if the aging “Golden Boy” De La Hoya truly wants to fight him. However, for Golovkin to take the fight, he would have to agree to melt down to 154, because that’s the weight that De La Hoya wants the fight to take place at, according to ESPN.com.

Golovkin previously said that he’d come down to 154 for a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. but only against him. But it’s likely that Golovkin would be agreeable to facing De La Hoya at this weight as well, because it’s not as De La Hoya would be any kind of threat to beat him given his advanced age, the time off he’s had from the sport, and his poor showing before he retired in 2008.

De La Hoya had lost three out of his last four fights before hanging up the gloves seven years ago. You can’t expect that the retirement years have improved De La Hoya’s skills any, can you?

“I have a great deal of respect for Oscar,” Golovkin said via Dan Rafael of ESPN.com. “He was a great champion and a huge star in the sport. If he decides to fight me, I’m ready as soon as possible. It would be another big drama show.”

You can definitely say it would be a drama show if De La Hoya winds up facing Golovkin next because it will likely be a true slaughter of epic proportions. De La Hoya feels that he would have a chance of beating Golovkin because Sugar Ray Leonard came out of a three-year retirement in 1987 to defeat middleweight champion Marvin Hagler by a decision. However, there was a world of difference between Leonard and De La Hoya’s situation. Leonard was still in his 30s, and still had his lightning hand speed at the time he fought Hagler.

Leonard wasn’t in his 40s, and hadn’t been out of the ring for seven years like De La Hoya. Further, Leonard also hadn’t lost 3 out of his last 4 fights before retiring like De La Hoya had. Their situations are totally different. Hagler, as good of a puncher as he was, he didn’t have one-punch power like Golovkin does. Hagler was the type of fighter who would pound you into submission over a course of rounds. He wasn’t someone who would drop you with a single shot like Golovkin.

“I think about Sugar Ray Leonard and Marvin Hagler,” De La Hoya said. “If [Leonard] could do it why can’t I? We both come from similar situations. We are both hungry for the competition, we’re both ambitious.”

De La Hoya sounds totally deluded. Leonard had his skills still intact when he came back. He was still youthful looking, and has his hand speed. De La Hoya doesn’t look young now, his hair is graying, he’s flabby around the face, and he had already lost his hand speed even before retiring in his mid-30s. De La Hoya still could throw combinations, but the blinding hand speed that he once had while fighting in the lower weights was gone. Without De La Hoya’s hand speed, he won’t have a ghost of a chance against a puncher like Golovkin.

The De La Hoya-Golovkin fight, if it happens, could be a big enough fight to increase Golovkin’s popularity in a huge way. I’m not sure if it will be a big enough fight to make Golovkin a pay-per-view attraction, but I think it will be big enough to lure the likes of Miguel Cotto and/or Saul “Canelo” Alvarez into fighting him if he doesn’t look too good. If Golovkin looks devastating against De La Hoya, then of course Cotto and Canelo will likely stay, far, far away from Golovkin until he ages to the point where he’s looking vulnerable.



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