By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Abel Sanchez says that his fighter Gennady “GGG” Golovkin will wind up blasting out Daniel Jacobs by the 7th or 8th round this Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in New York. Sanchez sees Jacobs coming out fast looking to test Golovkin in the first couple of rounds with his best shots.
When he discovers that he cannot hurt Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOS), the tables will turn and he’ll be slowly worn out by the Kazakhstan puncher. Sanchez sees Golovkin eventually wearing Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) down and stopping him by the 7th or 8th rounds of the HBO PPV televised fight.
Jacobs will last about as long as Curtis Stevens and David Lemieux, both of which Golovkin stopped in the 8th rounds. That doesn’t mean that those fighters are just as good as Jacobs in the talent department. It just means that Golovkin will take the same amount of time to break Jacobs down as he did with each of them.
Jacobs has a lot of different plans up his sleeves for the fight, but it might be difficult for him to implement any of them if his chin betrays him like it did in his knockout loss to Dmitri Pirog in 2010. Jacobs had plans in that fight too, but his chin couldn’t handle the power of Pirog, so the plans went up in smoke quickly in the 5th round.
For Jacobs to carry out any of his plans, he’s got to be able to take a hard punch from Golovkin without nose diving into the canvas like he did against Pirog and he shockingly did against the light hitting Sergio Mora. Getting knocked down by a respectable puncher like Pirog is one thing, but getting badly hurt and dropped by an aging non-puncher in Mora is another thing.
“He came into camp at 170 pounds, so it wasn’t a camp where he had to lose a lot of weight,” said Sanchez to Fighthub.com. “We never had to lose a lot of weight with him anyway. He’s at the threshold. So it’s a matter of it not being a fat farm, so we can work on things we wanted to. I think they’re the two best middleweights in the world. I think that Danny has proven with not only his KO ratio, but with his knockout of Peter Quillin not long ago. Quillin was supposed to be the guy that was going to give Gennady his fight of his life, and was going to knock him out. Jacobs handled him like he was nothing. I think because of that people are expecting a very offensive war where both guys go down. That makes it interesting to look forward to. I think Danny comes out and tries to test Gennady early, and finds out he can’t. I think Gennady wears him down and puts him out somewhere around the 7th or 8th rounds,” said Sanchez.
Jacobs will obviously test Golovkin early because that’s what he does with all of his opponents. Jacobs tends to come out nervous in the 1st rounds of his fights, and he attacks his opponents right away without feeling his way into the action. Jacobs does this every time. He did it against Mora and got knocked down. Jacobs did the same thing against Peter Quillin and got positive results with him knocking the 34-year-old out in the 1st round. It might be in Jacobs’ best interest to use his boxing skills and ring IQ in the early rounds against Golovkin rather than charging straight into the teeth of his offense.
If Jacobs goes straight at Golovkin like he normally does with his opponents in the opening round, we could see a very, very fast stoppage in round 1 with Jacobs being knocked out. I think that would be disappointing for the boxing fans that are paying to see it live and on HBO pay-per-view. The fight might go 7 or 8 rounds if Jacobs can take the big punches that Golovkin lands. I’m not sure that he can. This might be another Golovkin vs. Marco Antonio Rubio type of fight where Jacobs gets hit with a shot on the top of his head and is taken out in 2 rounds.
You can argue that Rubio had a much better chin back in 2014 than Jacobs has right now, and yet he still didn’t last more than 2 rounds against Golovkin. In the past, Rubio had been in fights against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, Kelly Pavlik and David Lemieux, and none of them had been able to stop him quickly despite them hitting him with their best shots in the early rounds. Rubio even stopped Lemieux in the 7th round of their fight in 2011 after taking his best punches for the first 6 rounds. The fact that Golovkin only needed two rounds to stop Rubio is a pretty good indication of the kind of punching power Golovkin possesses.
When asked if Jacobs is a bigger puncher than David Lemieux, Sanchez said, “Definitely, Jacobs is not a bigger puncher. David is very heavy handed and a bigger puncher. What Danny’s got is a little bit better boxing IQ. He’s a little smarter inside the ring because of his amateur background. I think the coaching and the sparring and all the stuff that he had in the gym. It was a little more productive for him than it was for David. David just depends on his power, and if he catches you, it’s good night. He’s very strong. I don’t think Danny’s got that kind of power. But Danny’s a much better technician inside the ring. With Danny in front of us, hopefully Canelo, that situation gets resolved and we wind up fighting in September. If not, then that’s not because we didn’t want it. It’s because Canelo didn’t want it. You can make all kinds of excuses for why not. The button line is, we’re ready for the fight. It’s them that’s not ready for the fight,” said Sanchez.
Lemieux does appear to have better punching power than Jacobs. Lemieux is more compact with his physique and his punches. He reminds of a smaller version of Mike Tyson with the way he’s able to generate so much power with his hooks. Getting hit by Lemieux is a different thing than getting nailed by Jacobs. Lemieux tends to knock guys out with single shots, whereas Jacobs has to pound away at his opponent for a number of rounds before he eventually gets them out of there.
Jacobs’ fast knockout of Peter Quillin two years ago in the 1st round in their fight in 2015 was not the norm for him. It usually takes Jacobs a number of rounds before he knocks out an opponent unless he’s facing weak opposition. He’s faced a lot of opposition in the last 7 years unfortunately. His management took their time and slowly brought Jacobs back at a glacial pace following his 5th round knockout loss to Dmitri Pirog in 2010.
You can criticize the amount of time that went by before Jacobs’ management finally has matched him against good opposition, but the results have been positive with him winning a world title against a fighter named Jarrod Fletcher. When Jacobs faces Golovkin on Saturday, it will be his first true quality opponent since his loss to Pirog in 2014. Quillin is a decent fighter, but very flawed. He had been arguably beaten by Andy Lee in 2014 in a fight that was a ruled a draw.
In speaking about who wins the Canelo vs. Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight, Sanchez said, “I think Canelo should win. It’s a very good fight. I think it’s a fight where Chavez scares him a couple of times, and scares Oscar a couple of times by hurting him and maybe dropping him. But I think Canelo should win. His youth and his experience in being in big fights and his speed, I think it will be a key factor,” said Sanchez.
Canelo has a big advantage over Chavez Jr. because of his activity level in the last 5 years, and because of the 164.5 pound catch-weight that Golden Boy Promotions is using for the fight. Those factors alone are going to make it all but impossible for Chavez Jr. to win the fight. Canelo is also much faster than Chavez Jr., who looks slower to me than he was in his best years. Chavez Jr. will need to be able to take a lot of punishment for him to survive long enough to wear Canelo down. Chavez Jr. has done it before though. In his fight against Andy Lee in 2012, Chavez Jr. took a lot of big shots from him, but he was able to score a knockout in the 7th round. Chavez Jr. trapped Lee against the ropes and traded shots with him in the 7th round until he stopped him with a series of big shots.
In talking about whether Lemieux will get a fight against Canelo soon, Sanchez said, “I don’t think that fight is big enough right now for Canelo unless he’s running away from Golovkin, then maybe so. I think Lemieux still has to build up. That was a great knockout of [Curtis] Stevens, but it was of Stevens. It wasn’t somebody of higher caliber where it would have warranted him a Canelo fight,” said Sanchez.