By Chris Williams: A lot of fans are counting out Dominic Wade (18-0, 12 KOs) tonight for his fight against IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) in their HBO televised match.
I think these people are selling Dominic short. He’s got the ability to give Triple G his first loss of his career and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what we see tonight. Triple G looks overrated to me, and I don’t think he’s nearly as good as what the people say he is.
Fans have been jumping on the Golovkin bandwagon based off him picking up flimsy wins over fighters that didn’t have that much ability in the first place. I don’t want to name the guys that didn’t have the ability, but if you look at GGG’s resume, you’ll see it littered with average fighters that had no business to be fighting for a world title in the first place against GGG or anybody good. The middleweight division isn’t what it used to be now that Bernard Hopkins is no longer around to hold the reigns.
Wade is the first fighter that Gennady has faced that has the power, speed and boxing skills to hand him his first loss of his career. Golovkin’s last opponent David Lemieux had the power to beat him, but not the hand speed, ring smarts or the boxing pedigree to do the job. He was just an average fighter with a lot of power but without the ability to use it. All that wasted power strapped to a skateboard without the ability to explode on Golovkin’s chin. With Wade, you have the power and the delivery system to land the shots.
Golovkin is going to have all he can handle in this fight, and I think there’s a chance that GGG is going to get put in his place by Wade. I’m not saying it’s a good chance, but I think it’s definitely possible. Golovkin is still the same fighter that was beaten in the 2004 Olympics by Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov by a 28-18 score.
If you saw that fight, you’ll have noticed how badly Golovkin was dominated by Gaydarbekov. It wasn’t even close. Golovkin was punched around by Gaydarbekov and battered. If that had been a 12 round fight, I don’t think Golovkin would have seen the 12th round, because he was taking a bad beating in there and he looked exhausted. Wade has the talent to do exactly what Gaydarbekov did with his powerful combinations, his movement, and his strategic pushing off. It was a brilliant boxing and punching display by Gaydarbekov.
There was no way that Golovkin was going to beat a fighter as good as that. Wade has the ability to do exactly what Gaydarbekov did by roughing Golovkin up, using movement, and landing hard combinations to drive him off. Gaydarbekov fought a brilliant fight in beating up Golovkin and not letting him get his shots off. The fight was a mismatch. Golovkin wasn’t ready for someone as good as Gaydarbekov. It’s too bad he never turned pro because he would have been a good one. Wade has the talent do exactly what he did to Golovkin. It won’t be hard.