By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten challenger Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) says he sees nothing in the game of IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) that makes him think that he’s a special fighter.
Wade, 25, agrees with what Floyd Mayweather Jr. said recently when he commented that there are no special effects with Golovkin. Mayweather says Golovkin is straight up and down and he’s convinced that he would beat him if he came back and took the fight with the 34-year-old Kazakhstan fighter. Mayweather isn’t interested in making a comeback to face Golovkin, however.
Wade and Golovkin will be facing each other in a little over a month on April 23 on HBO Boxing from the Forum in Inglewood, California. Despite Wade’s bold talk, he’s a considerable underdog in this fight, and he’s not going to be able to change the odds of the fight by denigrating Golovkin and saying he’s just a normal man.
The odds-makers still see Golovkin as the decided favorite. What hurts Wade’s chances of winning the fight, besides his lack of power and hand speed, is the fact that he doesn’t have the experience to be tackling a fighter in Golovkin’s class.
The only tough opponent on Wade’s resume is 42-year-old Sam Soliman, and he struggled to beat him last year in winning a questionable 10 round split decision over Soliman. That fight is the whole extent of Soliman’s experience as a pro. The rest of his fights have come against weak opposition that he was able to bowl over.
“I’m just different,” Wade said to Fino Boxing. “A lot of people would be scared [to face Golovkin], but I look at it as an opportunity. I’m an animal, a hungry young man. I’m going to get in there and adjust.”
Golovkin has a way of making his opponents afraid of him, but he doesn’t do that by being flashy or having hand speed that would impress guys like Mayweather and Wade. Golovkin does it by putting tremendous pressure on his opponents, throwing with major power, and forcing them to brawl whether they would to or not. In order to have a chance of beating – or surviving – against Golovkin, you’ve got to be able to slug with him. If you can’t do that, then you’re not going to last long.
Wade will need to be able to punch with Golovkin for as long as the fight lasts, and I’m not sure that he’s going to be able to do that. Guys like Max Kellerman and Paulie Malignaggi see talent in Wade, but he still is going to need to be able to take big punches to the head from Golovkin in order to have a chance to win. Considering that Soliman had Wade on the brink of defeat last June, I’d have to say that it’s going to be extremely tough for Wade to win this fight.
“I’m going to do everything I’ve got to do,” Wade said to Fighthype about his fight against Golovkin. “I think he’s a man like me. I don’t think he’s a monster. I think he’s a good fighter. He has no special effects. I think to his opponents he’s fighting, they’re a little scared before they get inside the ring due to the hype. I don’t see no special effects,” said Wade.
I think Wade is getting things twisted in his head when talking about Golovkin not having any “special effects.” It looks like Wade and Mayweather feel that a fighter must have flashy moves for them to win fights. They don’t seem to realize that guys like Sergey Kovalev, Roman Gonzalez and Golovkin aren’t flashy fighters with amazing hand speed. These different types of fighters that bludgeon the fast guys into submission by forcing them to fight whether they want to or not. That’s why a fighter like Mayweather would never beat Golovkin, because his only game plan would be to run around the ring. That might work against limited fighters like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Andre Berto, but it would probably not work well for Mayweather. Wade is in the same boat, but worse because he doesn’t have hand speed like Mayweather and he doesn’t move well. Wade is just a fighter with an inflated ranking and a controversial win in his last fight against Soliman that got him to this point.
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