By Jeff Aranow: Undefeated challenger Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) is being overlooked by the boxing world for his title challenge this Saturday night against the unbeaten IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) for their fight at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
Wade, 25, doesn’t mind that he’s the underdog in this fight because he feels motivated to prove the many doubters wrong when he goes in and hands the hard hitting Golovkin his first loss of his pro career.
Wade isn’t well known because his career is just starting out and many of his fights have gone under the radar due to him facing lower level opposition. Wade is managed by the powerful manager Al Haymon, and he looked good in his last fight in beat former world champion Sam Soliman last June.
You could see in that fight that Wade has the talent and the punching power to be a world champion. He can hit every bit as hard as Golovkin. The only difference is that Wade isn’t quite as sneaky as Golovkin in varying the power on his shots. That’s one of the things that makes Golovkin such a good fighter. GGG disguises his power by throwing a lot of weaker shots for a while before loading up on something really big. He lulls you to sleep with the way he varies the power on his shots. Wade has the power to do what Golovkin does in the ring.
“No one is expecting what I got, or what I can do,” Wade said to Fightnews.com. “So I think everybody’s kind of underestimating what I can do and how I perform…it kind of motivates me a little bit due to everybody’s just looking past me already. Nobody really gave me a chance, so everybody’s kind of looking past trying to see the GGG and Canelo fight, but you know you never know what happens in this fight. Maybe I’ll be the one to shut it all down!”
People are underestimating Wade because in many cases they’ve never heard of him. He’s still a green kid that has yet to fight a lot on the national scene. Saturday night will be Wade’s chance to show the boxing world what he can do against a top fighter in the 160lb division. Wade had a good amateur career, so he’s not going to be over-matched when it comes to amateur experience.
The only area that Wade is lacking in is pro experience, and he’s not that far behind Golovkin. If you look at Golovkin’s resume, he only has the one fight against David Lemieux in being in with a good fighter. The rest of the guys that Golovkin has faced were C level opponents with marginal power.
Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler wants to get better opposition for him, but the fact that he can’t seem to do it makes you wonder about whether he ever will. This may be as good as it gets for Golovkin in facing the likes of Wade and Lemieux.
Golovkin is a 125:1 favorite to win on Saturday night against Wade. We’re going to find out if the people have made a mistake in selecting Golovkin against an unknown.