By Jeff Aranow: Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1, 33 KOs) won’t be getting the big money fight that he wanted against Saul Canelo Alvarez this Saturday night, but he does have an opportunity to make history by tying former middleweight champion Bernard Hopkins’ record of 20 consecutive title defenses in his fight against replacement opponent Vanes Martirosyan (36-3-1, 21 KOs) at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.
Golovkin, 36, wants to break Hopkins’ longstanding record of 10 years that he set a decade. Tying Hopkins’ record of 20 title defenses is one good thing that can come out of the Golovkin-Martirosyan fight on Saturday night.
”It will mean a lot, but compared to Bernard Hopkins, my record is much bigger – stronger and bigger,” GGG said this week. ”This is a good situation for me and for my fans, and that’s it. It is numbers, only numbers.”
Not surprisingly, Hopkins believes his 20 defenses came against better opposition than Golovkin’s 19 defenses. Since Hopkins fought in a different era, it’s impossible to know if the fighters that he beat would be able to compete in this era in the middleweight division. One thing that is likely though is that Golovkin would have beaten all 20 of the fighters Hopkins successfully defended his titles against. Jermain Taylor, who ended Hopkins’ title reign a 160, might have had problems with Golovkin’s punching power. Taylor was unseated as the unified middleweight champion by Kelly Pavlik.
Golovkin normally doesn’t focus on records, but the boxing media has let him know about the record, so now he’s focused on beating it. Golovkin’s fight against the arguably over-matched Martirosyan gives him a very good chance of breaking the record. Martirosyan is at a disadvantage in that he’s moving up in weight from light middleweight and he’s been out of the ring for over 2 years. Martirosyan has never shown the kind of talent even in his best years of his 13-year pro career that would indicate that he can hang with Golovkin. Martirosyan is in essence a sacrificial lamb that is being brought in for Golovkin to beat without any problems.
”I appreciate what he did,” Golovkin said about Hopkins to ESPN. ”There were a lot of good fighters in the middleweights. I didn’t realize he had so many defenses, because so many times he was fighting the same opponent. I was going step by step and improving my record, and so now I have a very impressive result,” Golovkin said.
During his 10-year title reign, Hopkins defended against Robert Allen 3 times and Antwon Echols two times. Hopkins fought Jermain Taylor twice, but those were both losses for him. If Taylor hadn’t come along, Hopkins likely would have had a much longer reign at middleweight. Taylor was just a little too fast and powerful for Hopkins.
Hopkins’ title reign lasted from 1995 to 2005. Hopkins complained bitterly after he was beaten by Jermain Taylor by a close 12 round decision in their first fight in 2005. Most boxing fans at the time felt that Taylor was the better fighter and landed the cleaner punches of the two. In the rematch, Taylor left no doubt in winning a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision.
Hopkins was a good fighter, but he clearly had the benefit of fighting during a weak era of the 160 lb. weight class. Hopkins was still in his prime when he lost twice to Jermain Taylor. A lot of boxing fans assumed Hopkins was over-the-hill at the time he fought Taylor, but that’s incorrect. After Hopkins lost to Taylor for the second time in 2006, his career hummed along for the next 10 years with him moving up to light heavyweight and winning world titles and doing well in winning titles. As a middleweight, Hopkins was never a great fighter. He was more of a guy that resided over a weak era. After Roy Jones Jr. moved up in weight, Hopkins was able to take advantage of the weak opposition to hold down the middleweight competition until Taylor came along. If James Toney had fought Hopkins during this time, he likely would have beaten him.
