golovkin5 By Dan Ambrose: The big unification fight between IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) and IBF 160lb champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) is only 29 days away for HBO pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden in New York. Boxing fans will finally get a chance to see if the 33-year-old Golovkin is for real or not.

There are more than a few fans of the sport who see Golovkin as little more than an over-hyped fighter who has taken advantage of the soft match-making by his promoter Tom Loeffler. Golovkin has been a pro for nine years now, and you can safely say that he’s not been tested in any way at all.

Golovkin’s toughest fight was against Kassim Ouma in June of 2011, and Golovkin took a real beating in that fight before scoring a 10th round stoppage. Luckily for Golovkin, his opponents haven’t been nearly as good as Ouma since that time, and this has enabled him to keep winning his fights without taking too much punishment.

Lemieux, 26, has a nine fight winning streak going for him since his losses four years ago to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine. Lemieux has improved a great deal since he took those fights at the ripe age of 22. He’s a lot stronger now, and more importantly his stamina has improved as well.

Lemieux arguably beat Alcine and was given a raw deal in the scoring of that fight. In the case of the Rubio fight, Lemieux was giving the Mexican fighter a terrible beating for five rounds until he gassed out in the 6th and wound up getting halted in the 7th.

Countdown to #GolovkinLemieux! pic.twitter.com/NQCPWEiSVv

— Gennady Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) September 18, 2015

The blueprint in how to beat Golovkin has already been created by Russian Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov, who defeated Golovkin with relative ease in the 2004 Olympics. Gaydarbekov used a lot of clinching, wrestling and jabbing to dominate Golovkin. It was a real smart tactic by Gaydarbekov to initiate clinches each time he would throw a punch, because it prevented Golovkin from returning fire. But Gaydarbekov also wore Golovkin down with the wrestling that he was doing with him in the clinch.

Golovkin tired really quickly due to the wrestling and constant clinches by Gaydarbekov. Another thing that Gaydarbekov did to get the better of Golovkin was to back up each time he would come forward looking to attack. Gaydarbekov would back up and either throw a punch and grab or just grab Golovkin to shut down his offense.

Gaydarbekov was the one who would decide when he no longer wanted to hold, as he would fling Golovkin aside violently when he no longer wished to wrestle or clinch. With Golovkin off balance after being tossed, Gaydarbekov would sometimes nail him with shots. It was the perfect game plan to totally negate Golovkin’s offense. What’s kind of surprising is that none of Golovkin’s 33 opponents have used Gaydarbekov’s blueprint on him. You would think that at least one of his opponents would have the forethought to study Golovkin’s last defeat to figure out what works against him, but no one has.

To beat Golovkin, Lemieux will not only need to clinch with him frequently to shut down his offense, but also wrestle with him in the clinches to wear him down. If Lemieux can clinch Golovkin 10 times per round to keep him from getting his offense in gear, Lemieux can definitely win this fight.