Golovkin won’t be reckless against Jacobs says Sanchez

By Boxing News - 01/31/2017 - Comments

Image: Golovkin won’t be reckless against Jacobs says Sanchez

By Dan Ambrose: Many boxing fans have the mistaken belief that IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) has poor defensive skills and is easy to hit, which they think could come back to haunt him in his fight against Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) on March 18 in their fight on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez says that’s the farthest thing to the truth. Sanchez says that Golovkin won’t be careless in his fight against the 29-year-old Jacobs, although he doesn’t see the fight lasting more than eight rounds due to Golovkin’s huge punching power.

Sanchez says that Golovkin may have intentionally looked vulnerable in his last fight against welterweight Kell Brook on September 10 in order to get the other top fighters in boxing to step up to the plate to take a fight against him. Jacobs was the only one that took the fight, said Sanchez. Even then, Jacobs only took the fight because the World Boxing Association ordered i. If not for that, then Golovkin and Jacobs probably wouldn’t have fought. Jacobs says that he wanted the Golovkin fight, but it’s still difficult to imagine him breaking his habit of fighting guys like Sergio Mora, Caleb Truax and other marginal middleweights.

Sanchez said this to esnewsreporting.com about the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight:

“Gennady didn’t really feel that Brook could hurt him,” said Sanchez. “With Jacobs, with 29 knockouts in 32 fights, it’s obvious he can punch. So in the first couple of rounds, we’ll see if Jacobs is a threat. If he’s not a threat, then hopefully we can get him out of there. He won’t be reckless. It’s just a matter of getting Golovkin in the right frame of mind. Right now, he’s focused because Jacobs is a treat. In his last fight, he didn’t feel Brook was much of a threat. So it was a difficult fight for him,” said Sanchez.

Jacobs is not as big a puncher as some boxing fans think he is. I’m sure that Sanchez has a good idea of how hard Jacobs hits. He’s not doing to talk down the fight through, because it’s on HBO PPV. The more boxing fans that mistakenly believe this to be a 50-50 fight the better it will be for Team Golovkin. It just means those boxing fans will spent their hard-earned money on purchasing the fight thinking Jacobs can win. I think the boxing fans are going to find out the hard way that it’s not going to be a competitive match-up. Jacobs doesn’t hit hard enough to last against Golovkin, and his chin is too weak to take his big power shots. We saw that in Jacobs’ 5th round knockout loss to Dmitri Pirog seven years ago in 2010. That was the last time that Jacobs fought a puncher. He’s been carefully matched eve since then by his management.

When asked who wins the Golovkin-Jacobs fight, Sanchez said, “The guy that lands the first significant shot, because they’re both good finishers. If one of them gets you hurt, they’re going to put you away. Jacobs proved that with [Peter] Quillin, and obviously we’ve seen that with Golovkin. I think with Golovkin, the fight doesn’t go past the 8th round. David Lemieux was a plodder. David Lemieux was a guy with big heavy hands, but without the IQ. The difference in the IQ between Jacobs and Lemieux is immense. So we have to be cognizant of the fact that Jacobs not only has a history of amateur fights, but also as a pro. He’s been able to outwit a lot of the guys. Lemieux did it with raw strength and power, Danny has done it with brains. That’s why this fight is dangerous. Now that we’re going to this level, he’s seen Golovkin and everybody has tape on Golovkin and he’s trying to dissect Golovkin and Danny has the tools to be able to do it. Whether he can handle the strength and power and pressure of Golovkin remains to be seen. This is a real threat, and because it’s a real threat, Golovkin is going to be very focused. Golovkin has been in camp since November and he didn’t have a fight. I hope we have two guys in a chess match, hitting the hell out of each other, because as a fight fan, that’s what I want to see. I’m tired of the wrestling. I’m tired of the mauling. I want to see two guys go at it like they did 20 years ago, 25-year-ago, when you saw Duran fight Hagler, when you saw Duran fight Sugar Ray Leonard. All of those guys going at each other, not holding or clinching. If that’s the case, then whoever emerges from the fight will be considered pound-for-pound the best fighter, because we’re going to see a fight, not a wrestling match. Danny was the only one that stepped up. The reason he stepped up is because he got that great win against Quillin, and the great win against [Sergio] Mora and the WBA mandated it. But nobody else was willing to sign on the dotted line [to fight Golovkin other than Jacobs]. You can only do so much to get someone inside the ring to fight Golovkin. If they won’t, we’ve got to take whoever will,” said Sanchez.

I don’t think Golovkin is going to take this fight lightly, but he doesn’t take any fight lightly. Golovkin is not going to intentionally put himself in harm’s way against Jacobs like he did in his last match against Kell Brook. But I also don’t think Golovkin is going to treat Jacobs as cautiously as he did Curtis Stevens and David Lemieux. The reason for that is because I believe those guys were better punchers than Jacobs. He can punch hard, but not at the level of Stevens and Lemieux. Those guys are very solid punchers, and Golovkin knew that, which is why he wasn’t willing to put himself in the firing line of their shots. Golovkin took it easy in those fights and picked his spots to throw his big power shots. It worked out well in both fights with Golovkin scoring knockouts in round 8 each time.

Speaking about Golovkin’s recent fight against Kell Brook, Sanchez said, “He may have just made himself look vulnerable so guys would step up. I don’t know. He did that against [Willie] Monroe. He did that against Dominick Wade a little bit. We’ll see on the 18th if Danny can do what they think he can do. If he tries and stays in there and fights, we’re going to be treated to a good fight. I’m expecting the guy that fought [Dmitri] Pirog in the first four rounds. He got caught with a shot that put him down, but [referee] Robert [Byrd] held him down. He could have gotten up. I don’t know why Robert held him down. I’m expecting that Jacobs. Absolutely, he was winning. It’s boxing. You get caught with shots all the time. Golovkin just told me that Brook touched him up. So that’s the Jacobs I’m expecting. He’s got the tools. He’s a very, very good fighter. Golovkin hits harder than any light heavyweight out there. Darnell Boone, who has fought everybody, says he’s probably the hardest puncher he’s ever been hit by. To go further, he’s never hit anybody 100 percent in a fight. In the gym, yes,” said Sanchez.

If you saw the Jacobs vs. Pirog fight, Jacobs was not doing that well. Sanchez makes it appear that Jacobs was doing a swell job against Pirog up until the moment he was knocked out. That’s not true. Pirog was hitting Jacobs with single shots in every round that was getting the crowd really into it. Jacobs looked very uncomfortable with the pressure and the power of Pirog’s shots.

Jacobs looked shaken up going into the 5th round. He was not comfortable at all with what Pirog was doing inside the ring, and it was pretty clear that it was going to end badly for him. Referee Robert Byrd held Jacobs down after he was dropped. The reason he did that was because Jacobs was flat on his back with his eyes closed after being knocked down. He looked unconscious. When a fighter looks like that, the referee is not going to let him continue fighting after he wakes up. They have to stop the fight. If Byrd had let Jacobs continue fighting, he would have almost surely been destroyed by the first punch Pirog hit him with. Jacobs was hurt. Getting up and continuing to fight would have been a mistake for Jacobs. The Jacobs that fought Pirog won’t last four rounds against Golovkin. Hopefully, Jacobs has improved from that performance.

I don’t know if Golovkin purposefully let himself get hit by Brook or not. I think he was more focused on getting his own big power shots off, and he was willing to take whatever Brook threw at him while he was in the process of blasting him out. Brook did a good job of landing some nice shots to the head of Golovkin, and getting out of the way of many of his punches. Brook’s problem was he couldn’t make Golovkin miss with all of his shots, and he ended up suffering a broken eye socket. Brook decided to quit in round 5 after getting hit with a body shot. Brook quit without officially quitting by choosing to stop throwing punches. That moved forced his trainer Dominic Ingle to throw in the towel. If it weren’t for Ingle tossing in the towel, then Brook would have been knocked out in the real sense.

Sanchez said this to Michelle Phelps about Jacobs’ talent compared to Lemieux’s:

“More boxing technique inside the ring,” said Sanchez in comparing Daniel Jacobs to David Lemieux. “Better tools than Lemieux. He had heavy hands, but he didn’t know how to use them. His IQ was limited, so it was easy to keep him on the outside and bop-bop-bop and hit him whenever he wanted to hit him. I believe Danny will think he can get on the inside and fight. People will see the kind of fight we used to see, two guys on the inside trying to outdo each other with some skill and though. It will be reminiscent of Hagler and Hearns. Those guys that fought that didn’t hold,” said Sanchez.