By Allan Fox: Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) has studied Danny Jacobs’ fights well, and he expects him to run on November 11th when they meet-up. From his research of the 30-year-old Jacobs’ past fights, he noticed that he hates to fight.
Jacobs prefers to box rather than fight it out against his opponents. Arias’ best chance of winning is for him to KO Jacobs. Arias isn’t connected with a big promoter the way that Jacobs is with Eddie Hearn. Jacobs also recently signed a multi-fight contract with HBO. That obviously helps when it comes to winning a decision. Arias will need to be shooting for a knockout if he wants to have his hand raised at the end of the fight.
The 27-year-old Arias says he will be chasing Jacobs if he decides to run like he did in the Gennady “GGG” Golovkin fight. Any chance of Jacobs winning the fight with GGG was dashed when he decided to run for the first 6 rounds. It was a plan destined for failure, but unfortunately for Jacobs, he stuck with it for too long. In hindsight, it would have been risky for Jacobs to go after Golovkin early in the fight when he was still fresh. Jacobs’ weak chin might have betrayed him, and he might have ended up counting stars. As it was, Jacobs was badly hurt in round 10 by a big uppercut from Golovkin. Oddly enough, the 3 judges gave Jacobs the 10th.
Jacobs and Arias will be facing each other on November 11 on HBO Boxing starting at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT.
Jacobs is convinced he’s the best fighter in the middleweight division, and his with Arias will be a good test to see if he’s as good as he thinks he is. Jacobs will be fighting for the first time under the guidance of promoter Eddie Hearn, who believes he can turn him into a star by having him face and defeat Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Saul Canelo Alvarez. Hearn is arguably the biggest promoter in the UK, and now he believes he can become the biggest in the U.S as well. For that to happen, Hearn will need to sign a lot more fighters than just Jacobs.
“I’m going to chase him,” said Arias to Fighthub about Jacobs. ”I know he’s going to run! So, when I hit him, and he gets to running, I’m going to chase him and I’m going to make it a dogfight. So, I’m ready for a 12-round dogfight and we’re going to find out what Jacobs got in November.”
Whether Jacobs runs or not will depend on the fire power Arias brings. Jacobs did not like getting hit by Dmitry Pirog and Gennady Golovkin, so he ran in both of those fights.
Dmitry Pirog used pressure to stop Jacobs in the 5th round in their fight in 2010. Pirog chased Jacobs down, trapping him against the ropes in round 5, and he knocked him out with a right to the head. That was a strange knockout. Jacobs had his eyes closed for 2 or 3 seconds. He then opened his eyes and popped to his feet and wanted to resume fighting. The referee had already stopped the fight by the time Jacobs got to his feet. Jacobs was surprised at the stoppage, but he left the referee no choice but to halt it with the way he was lying down with his eyes closed.
“You touch him, and you touch that chin,” said Arias in describing how to beat Jacobs. ”Jacobs doesn’t like to fight! He’s a boxer. You know, he’s athletic, he’s fast, he’s quick, but he gets wild and he doesn’t really like to fight. So, I just got to be myself, I got to dog him, I got to bring the fight to him, and that’s exactly what we plan on doing,” said Arias.
Arias will need to make his punches count when he does catch up to Jacobs, since he’s going to be trying to steal the rounds with landing big shots here and there. Jacobs is a lot like Canelo Alvarez in that respect. Canelo can be outworked for 2 ½ minutes of a round, and yet he still ends up being given the rounds based on him landing 2 or 3 eye-catching shots.
Giving rounds to the lazier fighter sets it up to where they can game the system by letting their opponents do all the arduous work, and all they must do is focus on landing 3 good shots. The judges end up giving them the rounds. The judges need to be a little more astute to understand what these types of fighters do, because it sets it up to where the guy that appears to have won the fight, for example Golovkin, end up not getting the victory. Arias is going to need to really pressure Jacobs if he wants to win a decision. Jacobs is the A-side in this fight with him being signed to HBO Boxing, which means Arias will probably need a knockout if he wants to get the victory.
When things get wild, Jacobs has a lot of problems. He’s not very good when he’s exchanging shots with his opponents. That’s how Sergio Mora knocked Jacobs down in their first fight on August 1, 2015. Jacobs hit the deck hard in round 1 against Mora. That wasn’t a flash knockdown for Jacobs. He was really hurt by Mora. Fortunately for Jacobs, Mora didn’t have the punching power to finish him off. In round 2, Mora hurt his ankle and the fight was stopped. Jacobs has been hurt in other fights against Michael Walker and Ishe Smith. As I mentioned, Golovkin had Jacobs hurt, and he wasn’t even putting a lot of pressure on him. Golovkin was mainly just jabbing Jacobs for the entire fight. That’s why Jacobs was able to go the full 12 round decision.
“I don’t really like to go off the Triple G fight because it was one of his better performances,” said Arias. “I mean, he still lost but he put up a good fight. But the thing with him is his chin. His chin’s been checked, I’ve said it a couple times. Go back and look at his record, go back and look how many times he’s hit that deck, how many times he’s been hurt, and I see that as a fault for him. He did look good, he did put up a valiant effort against Triple G, he had his moments in the fight, but his chin, man,” said Arias.
Jacobs lost to Golovkin because he was too concerned with not getting hit, and not concerned with doing enough to win. Jacobs still tells the boxing fans that he should have won the fight against Golovkin, but he’s deluded. You don’t win fights getting knocked down and running for 6 rounds. Even in the last 6 rounds of the fight, Boxing News 24 had Golovkin winning 4 of those rounds. The judges were overly generous to Jacobs in giving him 5 of the last 6 rounds. Jacobs didn’t appear to win that many rounds.
Arias can do a better job against Jacobs than Golovkin simply because he’s more willing to try for a knockout. Golovkin came into the Jacobs fight last March with his mind made up that he needed a “decision fight.” That’s the worst thing that a fighter can do. You never go into a fight choosing to just box and not shoot for a knockout. Golovkin made the fight with Jacobs a lot tougher than it should have been due to him choosing to focus on boxing him instead of looking for a KO.
