By Dan Ambrose: WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Danny Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) is feeling confident that the negotiations between him and IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) will soon be completed in the next couple of weeks for a fight between them in March 2017.
The boxing fans want to see the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight. They were supposed to face each other in December, but the negotiations between the two fighters were making slow progress.
Jacobs, 29, says he’s spotted some flaw in Golovkin’s game that he feels he can take advantage of when they face each other. Jacobs doesn’t say what that specific flaw is, but whatever it is, he says he’s known about it for some time. Former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi says the flaw he sees in Golovkin’s game is his nonexistent head movement. Malignaggi noticed how welterweight Kell Brook was able to land some of his big shots on Golovkin’s chin in their fight last September.
Malignaggi feels that if a smaller guy like Vrook was able to nail Golovkin with shots, then a bigger, more powerful and athletic fighter like Jacobs could take advantage of those flaws as well. What Malignaggi doesn’t say is that Jacobs has even bigger flaws than Golovkin when it comes to his punch resistance.
Jacobs fell apart against Dmitry Pirog six years ago in getting stopped in the 6th round in their fight in 2010. Since that time, Jacobs has fought only one good fighter in a Peter Quillin, who he stopped in the 1st round last December. Quillin is a good fighter, but flawed and vulnerable. We saw that before he fought Jacobs when he was held to a draw against Andy Lee, and troubled by Gabriel Rosado.
Jacobs said this to Fighthype.com about a fight against Golovkin in March:
“I’m looking for the next fight,” said Jacobs. “We’re in negotiations right now; every things looking good. Hopefully in March. That’s the date we’re looking at, mid-March. I’ll be back in the gym next week. Let’s see what happens. It’s not that I don’t want to fight him. I just want to make sure every things right. Right now the business side is taking care of it. Hopefully in a couple of weeks, we’ll have a dotted line signature, and we can get this thing going. We’ve got the game plan, so obviously he’s a guy we’ve been studying for a while. The game plan is already there. Now it’s about getting inside the gym and executing it inside the square ring. I think we’ve always kind of seen things. The talent is there. It’s all about going out and proving it,” said Jacobs in talking about flaws in Golovkin’s game that he’s spotted for some time.
If the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight doesn’t happen in 2017, then one of those guys will likely be stripped of their WBA 160lb titles by the World Boxing Association. The WBA ordered the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight, so it’s not as if they can just walk away from the fight without giving up their belts.
Golovkin is not likely to give up his belt, even if his management loses the purse bid for the fight. They’ll still likely take the fight. It might mean that Golovkin would need to fight outside of HBO Boxing, but I think he’d still do it. He wants to hold onto all of his middleweight titles, because he’s trying to unify the division.
Golovkin only needs the WBO belt in order to have all of them. That last belt may prove to be the toughest to acquire for Golovkin, considering that it’s currently held by Billy Joe Saunders. He’s not going to fight Golovkin for small money.
“As you saw with someone of Kell Brook’s ability to do, he was touching Golovkin and making him uncomfortable in spots,” said Malignaggi to fighthype.com. “The thing with Golovkin is he gets back on, he gets back to cutting you off. The difference with a natural middleweight puncher like Danny Jacobs and Kell Brook is, he’s a big puncher but at 147. So I think Danny will have an easier time getting Golovkin’s respect.
Having said that, Golovkin is mentally strong. He’ll be right back on. He’ll present himself right back there. It’s about Danny being consistent and confident in his offense more than his defense. You always have to be confident in your defense, but Danny has to be confident in his offense, because opportunities will present themselves.
Golovkin has no head movement. He’s a good fighter. He’s a fundamentally strong fighter, good balance with heavy hands, but he gives you opportunities to hit him. In his own pressure, there’s no head movement behind that pressure. His jab is not as consistent as it should be. Those are things you look at for an athletic fighter like Jacobs.
One thing about Golovkin is everyone is so enamored about everything he does. They don’t see some of the defensive flaws. Nobody is a perfect fighter. Golovkin is an excellent fighter. There are things he does to you physically and mentally that will drive you crazy, but the one fundamental thing you see is zero head movement. He comes at you and is always squared up, and he sets it up really well. He’s really creative with his offense. He goes to the body and head well, but there’s no head movement.
So you can pick him off. He’s not the fastest guy in the world, even if he’s fundamentally sound. Someone with speed and athleticism can pick him off and be first against him,” said Malignaggi.
Malignaggi’s theme is Golovkin doesn’t move his chin, so therefore he’s vulnerable and flawed. If Malignaggi saw Golovkin’s fight against David Lemieux, he’d have seen that he doesn’t get hit a lot when he’s fighting opposition with a lot of power. Lemieux barely laid a glove on Golovkin in their fight in 2015. You can say the same thing about Curtis Stevens when he fought Golovkin as well.
Triple G was very careful against those fighters, because he had every reason to be. He knew they could punch, so he wasn’t putting his chin on the line. In Golovkin’s fights against Kell Brook, Willie Monroe Jr. and Daniel Geale, he was willing to take risks against those fighters, because he had nothing to fear against those guys. They couldn’t punch. Brook is a good puncher at 147, but his power didn’t carry up with him to 160.
Before Malignaggi gets fully on the Jacobs’ bandwagon, I think he need to review his fight against Pirog from 2010 to see how he crumbles when met with resistance from a real fighter. We’ve seen Jacobs matched against a lot of mediocre fighters since then in endless confidence booster type of fights, but those wins do not mean that he’s improved in any way since then. Jacobs is still the same fighter that lost to Pirog many years ago.
If anything, Jacobs might not be as good now as he used to be, because he’s older and has been exposed. If you were to pick the more flawed fighter out between Golovkin and Jacobs, it would be an easy choice in selecting Jacobs. He was recently knocked down by 36-year-old former WBA junior middleweight champion Sergio Mora in their first fight. Mora isn’t a puncher, and yet he was able to drop Jacobs hard.