By Dan Ambrose: Former world title challenger Gabriel Rosado says he saw weakness from IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 Kos) in his fight last Saturday night against Kell Brook (36-1, 25 KOs) in their fight in London, England, and he can understand now why he chose not to fight former super middleweight champion Andre Ward.
Rosado notes that Golovkin was easy to hit, and he thinks he can be taken advantage of if a bigger opponent can get in close to him.
Rosado (23-9, 13 KOs) said to Fighthype.com:
“It played out the way I expected it to. Triple G showed signs of weakness in that fight. If you fight him on the inside, you can get the advantage on him. He showed a lack of defense. If he fought a bigger, stronger guy, he could have some issues. Obviously we see now why he avoided Ward.”
I don’t think there was any real money in a fight between Golovkin and Ward when the match was being talked about. Ward obviously would have wanted an even cut of the revenue for a fight against Golovkin. But with there not being huge money for a fight between them, I don’t think it would have been a good career move for Golovkin to move up to super middleweight to fight Ward. With that said, Golovkin moving up to 168 to fight former super middleweight champion Carl Froch would make a lot more sense, because Froch was a pay-per-view fighter at the end of his career in the UK. It would be a worthwhile fight for Golovkin to move up to 168 to fight Froch because it would be a big money fight like Golovkin’s match against Kell brook last Saturday night.
Golovkin had problems with the speed and elusiveness of Brook. He was fighting a welterweight with good hand speed and excellent defensive skills. Golovkin tends to leave himself open on defense by being aggressive in looking for knockouts.
When you fight the way that Golovkin does with him “street fighting,” getting hit is just part of the trade that comes with that style of fighting. If Golovkin focused on not getting hit to please guys like Rosado, he would probably be boring to watch and wouldn’t have as many knockouts or as many boxing fans that follow his fights. The good news is that Golovkin doesn’t listen to struggling fringe contenders like Rosado in taking career advice, because he understands what the fans want to see.
The fans don’t want to see Golovkin playing it safe the way Rosado did when he fought Golovkin. The fans want to see the exciting fighters like Golovkin, who is Arturo Gatti type of fighter with his thrilling style of combat. Golovkin gives the fans their money’s worth. If he were to back off from that style to fight in a way that is acceptable to Rosado, then you could expect that his knockouts would dry up and many of his fans losing interest in watching him.
Rosado couldn’t get on the inside against Golovkin in their fight in 2013, because he didn’t even try to. In looking at that fight again, a bloody and battered Rosado was on his bike for the most part the entire fight until he stopped in the 7th.
To his credit, Rosado stopped running in the 5th and actually took the fight to Golovkin long enough to bruise both of his eyes. However, Golovkin came out on fire in the 6th, and staggered Rosado with a tremendous right uppercut to the head. Rosado then got back on his bike and moved constantly for the remainder of the fight until the contest was halted in the 7th. It was not a particularly impressive performance by Rosado, considering that he didn’t really try to fight except for the 5th.
In hindsight, I’m sure Rosado wishes he could have a second chance against Golovkin to try and improve upon that performance. With Rosado ranked low by the WBO, he’s going to need to keep winning for Golovkin to bother fighting him again, because there’s no real reason to. Boxing fans aren’t interested in seeing Golovkin fight Rosado again, because he’s not well known, and the hardcore fans remember how one-sided their previous fight was.
#10 WBO Rosado, 30, will be fighting this Saturday night against #14 WBO Willie Monroe Jr. (20-2, 6 KOs) in a scheduled 12 round fight in the co-feature bout on the undercard of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Liam Smith card on HBO pay-per-view at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
If Rosado wins against Monroe, he could be facing the 26-year-old Canelo in December this year or in May of 2017. It’s pretty important for Rosado to win on Saturday night if he wants a nice payday fight against Canelo. Rosado likely won’t get too many opportunities like this again for him to get such a big payday, so he’s going to need to take advantage of it by making sure he gets past the crafty 29-year-old Monroe.