Golovkin vs. Jacobs – Final punch stats

By Boxing News - 03/19/2017 - Comments

Image: Golovkin vs. Jacobs - Final punch stats

By Allan Fox: Daniel Jacobs’ assertion that he had out-landed and out-threw Gennady Golovkin last Saturday night in his 12 round unanimous decision loss to him doesn’t match the final punch stats from Compu-Box, They saw Golovkin landing 231 of 615 punches for a connect percentage of 38. In comparison, Jacobs landed 175 of 541 punches for a connect percentage of 32.

Golovkin landed more punches, and his punches seemed to be the harder variety. Even Golovkin’s jabs were very hard, and snapping Jacobs’ head back when they landed. Jacobs landed a lot of weak jabs that weren’t thrown with any authority. They looked like they were thrown by Jacobs to keep Golovkin off of him rather than to score points.

For Jacobs to have won the fight, he would have needed to have been a lot busier than he was. Jacobs wasn’t fighting on his front foot, and the judges saw that and clearly they felt that Golovkin did the better job in the contest.

“We got the rounds in. We got the tough rounds that we needed,” said Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez after the fight. “I give G a 7½ or 8 out of 10. Daniel was very strong and had athleticism, and Gennady’s accuracy was not quite as pinpoint as in the past, but I’m happy with Gennady’s performance, and I’m happy the fans got to see a great fight.”

Golovkin was not as good as Sanchez says he was. Golovkin did well when he opened up with flurries on a couple of occasions in rounds 4 and 9, but most of the time, he was throwing one or two punches at a time. It was not the right game plan for Jacobs. Golovkin was a lot better when he attacking Jacobs all out than he was trying to box with him. What Sanchez had Golovkin doing last night was fighting Jacobs’ game.

By having Golovkin box, Sanchez was putting him right in the style that Jacobs wanted. It was not smart. Golovkin should have stuck with what brought him to this point in his career instead of changing his entire game to fit Jacobs. By Golovkin fighting in a slower manner and boxing, he gave Jacobs his only chance of winning the fight by slowing he action down. If you look at how Dmitri Pirog beat Jacobs in 2010, he used constant pressure and huge punches to take him out. Pirog wasn’t wasting time throwing jabs the way Golovkin did last night. Pirog was committing to every punch he threw in the fight by loading up on them. When Pirog landed, his shots snapped Jacobs’ head back. Pirog didn’t have the kind of power that Golovkin has, but he was able to get more out of his punches because he was loading up with them and totally unafraid to let his hands go.

Golovkin fought like he was scared and he made the mistake of boxing Jacobs instead of unloading on him with his normal attacking style. Like I said, Golovkin fought Jacobs’ game last night instead of his own game, and he nearly paid the price for his foolish mistake. The fact that Golovkin was STILL able to beat Jacobs even when fighting his game, it’s a testament of how good Golovkin is. It’s also a sign of how limited Jacobs is as a fighter. Golovkin beating Jacobs using his own game showed that Jacobs wasn’t even good enough to beat Golovkin with him fighting his brand of fighting.

The judges saw GGG winning 115-112, 115-112 and 114-113. The fight was lost by Jacobs in the first 6 rounds. He was knocked down in round 4, and he got off to a bad start in round 1 by not throwing enough punches. Golovkin did just a little bit more than Jacobs in rounds 1, 2 and 5.

Golovkin’s knockdown of Jacobs in round 4 put the challenger in a huge hole going into the second half of the contest. For Jacobs to rally, he needed to do a lot more than he did. To Jacobs’ credit, he fought well in the last 6 rounds of the match. Where Jacobs made a mistake was by not fighting harder in rounds 11 and 12 by failing to throw enough punches.

Jacobs should have been coming forward in the last two rounds to show the judges that he was actively trying to win. What we saw was Jacobs moving laterally and backing up, as if he was milking a large lead. That was foolish. Jacobs’ trainer Andre Rozier is partly to blame for Jacobs’ loss, because he should have been encouraging him more in between rounds to force Triple G back. That’s what Jacobs as the challenger needed to do. It’s as if Rozier was watching a different fight and not seeing things in a clear manner to give Jacobs the right advice when he needed it.

You can argue that if Virgil Hunter, the trainer for Andre Ward, had been working Jacobs’ corner last night, he would have seen how dire the situation was for him in the last 3 rounds and he would have told him that he needed to go after Golovkin. In hindsight, it was a lost opportunity for Jacobs. He could have beaten GGG with a few tweaks in his game in the championship rounds. The fight was there to be won by Jacobs if he had made one simple adjustment in his game.

Golovkin was having a terrible fight with him boxing and looking uncertain most of the time. Golovkin was using a different fighting style last night, and he did not look at all comfortable. Golovkin is at his best when he’s slugging all out. He’s good at boxing for brief periods of time only. But what we saw from Golovkin last night was him boxing the entire fight for the most part, and he’s not good enough to fight in that style for a full 12 rounds.

Golovkin was boxing approximately 90% of the time last night and slugging 10%. It should have been the other way around. It was a mistake by Golovkin, and his trainer Abel Sanchez dropped the ball in failing to have him make adjustments in the second half of the fight to turn him back into his normal killer mode.

“I need the decision,” Golovkin said in justifying his decision win. “I wasn’t thinking that I needed the 12th round to win the fight. This was my first test at 12 rounds. I needed a quality fight — not just the 12 rounds.”

Golovkin did appear to win the 12th round, but only because Jacobs was playing it safe in the final round, and not pushing the fight. If Jacobs had his head screwed on straight, he would have pressed the action and won the 12h by being busy. Golovkin looked he was tired in the final round, and unable to do much other than pushing his punches. Golovkin won the 12th round in my scoring by default due to Jacobs doing nothing in the round.

There were huge mistakes by both fighters last night with them not attacking each other the way the way they needed to win. Unfortunately for Jacobs, his mistakes were more costly, as he didn’t throw enough punches to beat Golovkin. When you get knocked down in a fight the way Jacob did, you MUST go on the attack to make up for the points you lost.

Jacobs didn’t do that. He said he wanted to go toe-to-toe with Golovkin, but we didn’t see Jacobs do that. He talked a lot after the fight about how he could have gone toe-to-toe with him, but he didn’t do that. Jacobs fought like he was in the ring with a big cat that was going to tear him apart, and he wanted no part of mixing it up with Triple G in a real way. Jacobs’ comments after the fight seemed like he was talking about another person when referring to himself, because he did not fight well. He fought like a frightened fighter that was just trying not get knocked out. Jacobs’ timid fighting style and his poor corner advice from his trainer led to him losing a fight that he could have won.

I can’t see Jacobs winning a rematch with Golovkin unless he changes his whole outlook to the fight. He’s got to be aggressive, and he’s got to throw a lot of punches. It might be in Jacobs’ best interest to change trainers to Freddie Roach or someone a little more offensive minded. I think Roach would have had Jacobs attacking Golovkin last night instead of having him play it safe the way Rozier was. Roach is a great coach for encouraging his fighters to go on the attack. Sometimes it backfires on them, but mostly it seems to work.

With Golovkin stuck fighting in a slow boxing style last night, Jacobs could have beaten him with a more offensive, high volume punch attack if he’d been able to make an adjustment to that style. Jacobs talked about having multiple game plans for the Golovkin fight in the lead up to last night’s contest, but we didn’t see that. We saw Jacobs fighting in the same basic manner the entire time against Golovkin. Jacobs fought timidly, and he lost because of that.