Joshua would like to see Golovkin at 175

By Boxing News - 09/17/2016 - Comments

Image: Joshua would like to see Golovkin at 175

By Scott Gilfoid: IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua says he would like to see IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin move up two entire divisions to fight someone from the 175lb division in order to replicate what welterweight Kell Brook did in moving up two divisions to fight at middleweight against Triple G.

Joshua says he would like to see how Golovkin would do under similar circumstances. Brook, who has always been a very heavy welterweight, was stopped in the 5th round by Golovkin last Saturday night on September 10 at the O2 Arena in London, England.

Brook suffered a broken right eye socket, which some boxing fans believe was the cause of the stoppage. I’ve seen the 5th round in slow motion, and I noticed that Brook stopping punching completely after getting hit with a brutal right hand from Golovkin thrown to the solar plexus.

The effects of the shot caused Brook to drop his hands completely and take five straight punches to the head. To show you how hurt Brook was, he didn’t even try to raise his gloves to protect his head. He was clearly hurt from the body punch.

The final sequence saw Golovkin land shot after shot to the head of Brook without him throwing anything back. It wasn’t the eye injury that caused Brook to stop throwing punches in round five. It was a body punch that completely shut down his offense.

“It would be interesting to see how Triple G does if he moves up two weights because that’s what Kell Brook has done,” said Joshua to skysports.com. “I’ve got a lot of respect for Kell for what he did. Kell Brook is talented – he’s been boxing for years, he boxed well.”

It sounds like Joshua needs to realize that Brook is arguably a middleweight and not a welterweight. Brook has always been a heavy guy that has chosen to melt down to 147 to fight against welterweights rather than fight guys his size. With Brook waking around in the 170s and 180s in between fights with him carrying pure muscle, that tells me he’s a middleweight.

Golovkin doesn’t walk around in the 190s the way that light heavyweights do. Golovkin doesn’t have the size to be fighting at 175 the way that Brook has size to fight at 160. I mean, if Golovkin always walked around in the 190s like the light heavyweights, then, yeah, he should move up to 175 to compete against those guys.

Golovkin doesn’t have the size for that division. Heck, Golovkin probably shouldn’t even be fighting at middleweight. He rehydrates to just 170 for his fights at 160. He literally could be fighting at junior middleweight like Erislandy Lara, Jermell Charlo, Jermall Charlo, Liam Smith, Julian Williams and Demetrius Andrade. All those fighters rehydrate into the low 170s like Golovkin does, and yet they chose to fight at junior middleweight.

By Joshua asking Golovkin to fight at 175, he’s putting him in a situation where he would be fighting guys that outweighed him by 15 to 20 pounds on the night. Golovkin didn’t outweigh Brook in his fight last Saturday night. They were basically the same size.

Brook just didn’t have the natural punching power to compete in that fight, and he especially had problems with Golovkin’s body punching. In the end, it was the body shot from Golovkin that did Brook in and caused him to stop throwing punches in the 5th round. It wasn’t the weight that caused Brook to lose the fight. It was the power from Golovkin and the body punching that did the trick.

There’s no way of changing the outcome of the Golovkin-Brook fight by having Golovkin lose to someone two divisions above him at 175. Joshua can ask Golovkin to fight a heavyweight like himself, but that won’t change the fact that Brook wasn’t good enough to beat the Kazakhstan fighter. You have to be able to digest what happened, because you can’t change what occurred by having Golovkin lose to someone at 175.

The fact of the matter is Brook wasn’t good enough to beat Golovkin on the night. Instead of asking Golovkin to move up to light heavyweight, Joshua should be trying to convince Golovkin in giving Brook a rematch. I don’t think the outcome would be any different, but at least Brook could try and improve by learning how to stay out of the way of Golovkin’s body shots so that he doesn’t get hurt once again in the 5th. Brook couldn’t handle Golovkin’s punches to the body. I still don’t know why Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez didn’t have GGG focusing on throwing punches to the body. Believe me; if Golovkin had thrown 90 percent of his shots to the body, he would have stopped Brook early. I mean, it wouldn’t have looked as eye-catching as Golovkin poleaxing Brook, but he would have gotten the job done without Brook’s trainer Dominic Ingle throwing in the towel. With the way the fight ended, Brook was able to claim that it was stopped due to his eye injury rather than him saying that he was hurt from a body shots. Golovkin could have taken away Brook’s injury excuse if he had nailed him with nothing but body shots. Like I said, Sanchez should have insisted that Golovkin throw nothing but body shots until Brook collapsed in a heap on the canvas. It would have been impressive to see the fight end with a true stoppage rather than having it end by Ingle throwing in the towel.