By Jim Dower: IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs) scored his 22nd consecutive knockout in stopping an embarrassingly over-matched #3 IBF mandatory challenger Dominic Wade (18-1, 12 KOs) in the 2nd round on Saturday night at the Forum in Inglewood, California.
Golovkin dropped the 25-year-old Wade three times in the fight. The fight was halted after Golovkin dropped Wade twice in the 2nd round. A badly hurt Wade was unable to beat the count by the referee.
Late in the 1st round, Golovkin knocked Wade down with a looping right hand that appeared to catch Wade partially in the back of the head. It appeared that Golovkin’s right wrist partially cuffed Wade around the back of his head to send him down. Wade was fortunate that the round ended as he got back to his feet because he would likely have finished off in that round if there was more time.
In the 2nd round, Golovkin landed a big right hand to put Wade down. Wade got back up and was questioned by the referee Jack Reiss to see if he was willing to continue. Wade looked like he was whispering to Reiss instead of telling him in a forceful manner that he wanted to continue fighting. Never the less, the fight was allowed to continue. Golovkin then landed a right that immediately put Wade down for the final knockdown of the fight. Wade was too hurt to get back up in time and the fight was stopped.
Wade landed some nice shots in both rounds. His problem was he couldn’t take Golovkin’s big power shots. Golovkin was walking through Wade’s shots and nailing him with body shots and big head shots.
After the fight, HBO commentator Max Kellerman had this to say about WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s desire to fight Golovkin at a catch-weight of 155lbs, “What I do agree with fans that are angry about, that the middleweight division is defined as a weight limit of 160 pounds. That’s a middleweight. You can weight less but you can’t weigh more. But if in the contract it says you have to weigh less than 160, you’re not fighting at middleweight. That’s not middleweight. If the contract stipulates you can’t weigh 160 pounds by definition that’s not a middleweight. So therefore, Gennady Golovkin has universal recognition as the real champion in the division because the other guy [Canelo Alvarez] and the guy before him, Miguel Cotto, weren’t fighting at middleweight,” said Kellerman.
Golovkin is waiting on the result now of the May 7 fight between Canelo and Amir Khan. Canelo will be defending his WBC middleweight title, and Golovkin is the mandatory challenger to that fight. The winner of the Canelo-Khan fight has 15 days to decide if they’ll defend it against Golovkin or not. If they choose not to, then they’ll be stripped of the WBC title by the World Boxing Council and Golovkin will either be given the belt or he’ll need to fight the next highest available contender for the belt. Either way, it looks like Golovkin will be the WBC champion before long.
The next highest ranked contender is Jorge Sebastian Heiland. He’s not someone that would likely give Golovkin any problems whatsoever. In the best possible world, Canelo will elect to fight Golovkin next if he beats Khan, but with Canelo feeling that he needs a catch-weight of 155lbs in order to fight him, it doesn’t look like the fight will take place. Canelo can’t force a mandatory challenger to agree to a catch-weight. He can only do that with voluntary challengers. The only thing Canelo can do is threaten Golovkin that he’ll vacate if he doesn’t agree to a catch-weight. If Canelo does that, he’ll look silly, especially when Golovkin calls his bluff.
#WhosNext pic.twitter.com/CkDBz4ASrz
— Gennady Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) April 24, 2016
This fight made the International Boxing Federation look bad because they were the one who made the decision to make Wade the IBF mandatory challenger after the previous mandatory Tureano Johnson was injured in training camp. The IBF should have watched some of Wade’s fights to see how limited he was as a fighter. The IBF would have been better off making one of these fighters the IBF mandatory to Golovkin: Hassan N’Dam, Arif Magomedov, Ryota Murata or Sergiy Derevyanchenko. Any one of those fighters would have been infinitely better than Wade, who looked like he didn’t belong in the same ring with Golovkin. Wade looked absolutely terrible throughout.