By Allan Fox: WBO super featherweight champion Vasyl Lomachenko says Daniel Jacobs came up short last Saturday night in his attempts to rip Gennady “GGG” Golovkin’s middleweight titles away from him. Lomachenko notes that the Golovkin-Jacobs fight was a close one, but he doesn’t think Jacobs dominated enough in the majority of the fight for him to get the victory. He thought Jacobs fought well at times, but wasn’t consistent enough for him to beat Triple G.
Golovkin won by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 115-112, 115-112 and 114-113. Two of the judges gave Jacobs round 12 even though Golovkin landed over twice the amount of punches than him in connecting on 31 to Jacobs 15.
Lomachenko also says Golovkin should be the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. Ring Magazine revealed on Wednesday that Andre Ward is their new No.1 pound-for-pound fighter. It was a controversial pick for many boxing fans because Ward appeared to lose his last fight to Sergey Kovalev. Ward won, but he looked like he lost in the eyes of a lot of fans. Golovkin beat Jacobs a lot more decisively than Ward beat Kovalev, and he didn’t resort to wrestling like Ward did.
“Triple G, Kovalev and Terence Crawford,” said Lomachenko to Villianfy in naming who he believes should be the No.1 pound-for-pound fighter in boxing.
“It was a very close fight, but if you want to dominate the champ, you need to dominate the whole fight,” said Lomachenko about the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight. “It looks like my fight with [Orlando] Salido. It’s the same. You know who was the champion in this fight. If you want to be the champion, you need to dominate the whole fight,” said Lomachenko.
Lomachenko brings up a good point in saying that Jacobs didn’t dominate the action. He never dominated Golovkin. Jacobs was knocked down and he fought like he was running out the clock in most of the rounds with his circular movement. Jacobs doesn’t normally fight like that. He usually stalks his often over-matched opponents and looks to take them out with power shots. Jacobs normally fights guys like Sergio Mora, Jarrod Fletcher and Caleb Truax. This allows Jacobs to fight aggressively. But against Golovkin, Jacobs fought like he was scared through most of the fight, and that made it hard to give him rounds.
“I thought it was a good fight,” said Top Rank promoter Bob Arum to Fighthub.com about the Golovkin-Jacobs fight. “I thought Jacobs did a lot better than people thought, but I still think Triple G won the fight. I gave him 7 rounds to 5, and with the point, I made it a 3 point fight, which 2 out of the 3 judges did. In the worst case scenario, he won only 6 rounds in which case he still wins because of the knockdown,” said Arum.
Arum seems to have a really good grasp for the scoring of fights. 7 rounds to 5 in favor or Golovkin sounds fair. I had Golovkin winning 8 rounds to 4 with the knockdown in round 4 making a little more lopsided. Jacobs needed to do something spectacular after he was knocked down, and he failed to do that.
WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder says he thought Jacobs should have won the fight. He had the fight even after 11 rounds, and he said that Jacobs pulled it out in round 12. The interesting part is that round 12 round was one of Jacobs’ worst rounds of the fight in terms of punch stats. Round 4 and 12 round were rounds were Golovkin had a huge advantage in punches landed compared to Jacobs. The fact that Wilder thinks that Jacobs won the 12th is confusing because he was out-landed by 16 punches by Golovkin. In round 4, Golovkin landed 33 to 11 by Jacobs. In round 12, Golovkin landed 31 to Jacobs’ 15.
“This was an amazing fight,” said Deontay Wilder to Fighthype.com about the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight. “My hat goes off to Danny Jacobs. I think it was the best boxing skills I’ve seen in a long time. He showed a lot in that fight. I had it tied after the 11th, but I had him pulling off the upset in the last round. He did enough to pull that off, even with the knockdown that Triple G had. Overall, boxing won that night. Both of those guys did a magnificent job, and I would love to see an immediate rematch. Fights like that deserve an immediate rematch. I think that’s going to be a classic fight,” said Wilder.