Golovkin: I chose Dominic Wade because he’s my IBF mandatory

By Boxing News - 02/16/2016 - Comments

golovkin2By Dan Ambrose: IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) has a simple reason why he’s fighting unbeaten and totally untested #3 IBF Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) on April 23 rather than fighting someone better known. Golovkin points out that Wade is unbeaten and is his #1 IBF mandatory challenger. That appears to be the only reason why he was selected.

Those are reasons enough to fight the 25-year-old American. If Golovkin were to steer around the Wade fight, he would need a very good reason to present to the International Boxing Federation.

It wouldn’t be enough for him to simply say he found the ring an uninteresting one. Golovkin would have needed another champion to fight him in a unification fight at 160. However, none of the champions wanted to face Golovkin, which meant that he had no other choice but to fight Wade.

“You ask me why Wade? He’s undefeated and IBF mandatory challenger,” Golovkin said at today’s kickoff press conference in Los Angeles, California.

YouTube video

Wade is a big underdog in this fight. Bovada has Golovkin the favorite by the line -10000 to +1600 for Wade. It’s going to be really tough on Wade to pull off the upset because he looked so bad in his last fight against Sam Soliman last July. That fight should be a do over because Wade fought well enough to lose by at least four rounds. The judging in the fight was atrocious by two of the judges that had Wade winning 95-94 and 97-92. The only judge that appeared to be seeing the fight correctly was Max DeLuca, who scored it 96-93 for Soliman.

This is Golovkin’s interim fight that he’s getting out of the way before challening WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez for his title in September. The idea is to challenger Canelo. Whether he takes the fight is open for debate.

Golovkin and Wade will be facing each other on HBO Championship Boxing on April 23 at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

The second Golovkin-Wade press conference will take place this Thursday on February 18 in New York.

Golovkin obviously needs to raise the bar a little in terms of the level of his opposition. A fight against Canelo could help Golovkin in this area. However, if the bout fails to come off, then Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler at K2 Promotions and HBO need to come up with more money to lure the top guys to fight him. The only way to get fighters like Billy Joe Saunders, Peter Quillin and Daniel Jacobs to want to fight a dangerous guy like Golovkin is to buy them by offering them so much money that they can’t refuse. Quillin has said in the past that he’s willing to fight Golovkin for the right amount of money. I believe that. Quillin just wants the fight to be worth it, because it doesn’t make sense for him to take on the most dangerous fighter in the division and not get more than he could make fighting a lesser guy.

I’m not sure that Golovkin will get a fight against Canelo in September. If not, then Loeffler needs to come up with big money to get the top guys to fight GGG, because the mismatches against guys like Wade, Willie Monroe Jr. and Martin Murray aren’t going to get him to the next level in terms of stardom.

“He [Mayweather] has a good style. He has a different style,” Golovkin said to ESPN. “He’s a good champion. He’s never been beaten. I think he’s very smart. I think he has a good boxing IQ. But sometimes people like big drama show, knockouts. My focus right now is Dominic Wade, absolutely 100 percent.”

Golovkin took some heat last week when he mentioned that he didn’t like Floyd Mayweather Jr’s fighting style. It’s nice that Golovkin got a chance to clarify his remarks in an interview with ESPN. It’s hard not to like the way that Mayweather Jr. fights because he’s always been such an exciting fighter. But there’s no doubts that he’s not been knocking out a lot of guys in the last few years, and he doesn’t have the same kind of thrilling fighting style that Golovkin has going for him.

When you realize that Mayweather started his career out at super featherweight and has since moved up in weight three divisions, it’s understandable that he can’t KO guys like Golovkin. It would be asking a bit much of Golovkin if he were to move up three divisions to the cruiserweight division and try to KO guys at the same clip.



Comments are closed.