By Eric Baldwin: Gennady Golovkin will have an easy time defeating Daniel Jacobs in their middleweight showdown on March 18, according to Triple G’s trainer Abel Sanchez. He doesn’t think that Jacobs will hold up under the heavy shots from Golovkin once he started touching him to the head and body in their fight on HBO PPV from Madison Square Garden.
Sanchez wants all the doubters and haters that criticized Golovkin all this time for him not having fought anyone good, he wants them to give him credit for the job he’s done against Jacobs.
This is supposed to be the toughest fight of Golovkin’s 10-year pro career, and yet Sanchez makes it sound like it’s going to be the easiest. Who knows? Perhaps it will be one of Golovkin’s easiest. Jacobs doesn’t have the wheels or the defense to elude someone like Golovkin. Jacobs wins his fights with his offense rather than his defense or by eluding his opponents with fast feet for 12 rounds.
It’s too late in the game for Jacobs to all of a sudden become a mobile fighter on March 18 when he gets inside the ring with GGG. Jacobs is going to need to fight the way he’s fought in the past by trying to outslug his opponent. That works in Golovkin’s favor, because his game is built around him slugging it out with his opposition.
Golovkin is already a big favorite to win the fight with the bettors. It’s not as if people are betting against the hard hitting Kazakhstan fighter for the fight against the 29-year-old Jacobs. The boxing fans have been riding Golovkin, because he’s been fighting guys like Dominic Wade, Amir Khan, Daniel Geale, Martin Murray, Matthew Macklin, Marco Antonio Rubio and Nobuhiro Ishida. These guys are decent fighters, but they’re not rated highly as super talents in the middleweight division.
Sanchez said this to ESPN.com about Golovkin’s fight against Jacobs:
“I think — I hope — in the aftermath of the fight, the guys that are bad-mouthing Golovkin for not fighting nobody go back and read the articles [that will come out in] the next couple of months about what a tough opponent this is going to be for Gennady, how this guy has all the tools to beat Gennady, because after he beats him and beats him decisively and easily, I hope he gets the recognition he so richly deserves,” said Sanchez.
The Golovkin-Jacobs match is going to come down to how well Jacobs can handle the pressure that is going to be put on him by Golovkin. He’s going to have to deal with Golovkin attacking him right from the start of the fight. That’s Golovkin’s pattern. He wants to turn his fights into a big “drama show” by looking to take them out right from the start of his fights.
Since Jacobs is a hard puncher, I think Golovkin may treat him with some respect by being cautious with him in the early going to see what kind of power he’s got. What we’ll see from the beginning is Golovkin using his boxing skills to jab Jacobs frequently with hard jabs to the head. Golovkin will almost surely follow those jabs up with hard hooks to the head and body. Jacobs will need to start fighting back hard right away if he doesn’t want Golovkin to take him out. He’ll definitely be trying to do that.
You can’t expect Golovkin to be immune from criticism for the opposition he’s faced. Look at Saul Canelo Alvarez, Jacobs and even Miguel Cotto. Those guys get plenty of criticism for the opponents they face. Golovkin hasn’t had a lot of options available to him to fight the really good fighters at 160 until now. The only guy that was willing to fight him was David Lemieux.
Jacobs hasn’t been fighting good opposition in the last six years since his loss to Dmitry Pirog. It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since Jacobs lost the only fight of his career against Pirog in getting stopped in the 5th round. Jacobs wasn’t ready at the time to fight good opposition, and we saw what happened in that fight. Since then, Jacobs’ management has been slow in stepping him up. He’s just had that one fight against Peter Quilln as far as him fighting someone with some talent.
The rest of the guys Jacobs has fought have been fighters that didn’t belong in the same ring with him. He fought Sergio Mora twice. Why the second fight, I’m not quite sure. It’s been a waste of Jacobs’ career. If Jacobs or loses to Golovkin on March 18, his management needs to do a better job of matching him, because if all he has to show for in six years of his career since his loss to Pirog is a fight against Quillin, then that’s disappointing.
“I think he’s the most gifted, the best athlete, the best puncher, a sharp puncher, that can crack,” Sanchez said. “He can box. He had a mishap with [Dmitry] Pirog but he is absolutely the best fighter, period, that we have fought.”
Jacobs can punch, and he always has been able to punch. That’s never been the issue with him. The problem that Jacobs has had is with his punch resistance. He caved in against Pirog in a big way in struggling with his power and pressure. Jacobs had problems with Ishe Smith’s pressure and power. Jacobs was even knocked down by Sergio Mora in their first fight.
Jacobs’ confidence is lacking at times. If you saw how Jacobs fought against Jarrod Fletcher in the early going of that fight, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Jacobs fought scared against Fletcher, and he didn’t get aggressive against him until he recognized that he was in with a non-puncher. It was only then that Jacobs took over the fight and quickly got him out of there in round 5. Before that, Jacobs had problems.
Golovkin was hit a lot by welterweight Kell Brook in their fight on September 10 this year. Some boxing fans thinks Golovkin was hit because of his poor defense, but it looked to me like he was willing to get hit by Brook just so that he could retaliate with his own big power shots to take him out. In a sign of respect, Brook wasn’t willing to stay in the pocket against Golovkin the way he’d done against many of his other fights during his career.
“Daniel is my biggest fight, 100 percent he is toughest opponent. Right now I think he’s No. 2 in middleweight division. He’s an amazing fighter,” said Golovkin.
I don’t know if Golovkin is on the level about his thoughts on Jacobs being his hardest fight of his career or not. I remember Golovkin saying similar remarks before his fight against David Lemieux. In Golovkin’s last fight against Brook, he didn’t pour on the compliments quite so much, because it obviously would have made him look bad if he started saying that he was his best opponent of his career. It’s no big deal, but Golovkin hasn’t faced a lot of good opponents as of yet. That’s not his fault. He wanted to fight Jacobs, Cotto and Canelo Alvarez a long time ago, but he never got the fights against them. Golovkin also wanted to fight Felix Sturm when he was a WBA belt holder at the same time. Sturm never fought him, and that was unfortunate because it would have great news for the German fans at the time.
We’re going to find out on March 18 if this is an easy fight for Golovkin like Sanchez is saying. Jacobs is the younger guy, and he is faster and he does have very good punching power. The only thing that Jacobs might not have is the ability to handle the power of Golovkin as well as he handles his power. We’ve already see Jacobs knocked unconscious in the past by a guy with less power than himself in Pirog.