By Barry Holbrook: Gennadiy Golovkin is fighting Kamil Szeremeta on DAZN will be going heads up with the Errol Spence Jr vs. Danny Garcia pay-per-view bout on Fox on the same night on November 21.
Golovkin’s co-promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Boxing, revealed the news on Wednesday of IBF middleweight champion Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs) fighting on November 21 as part of DAZN’s stacked fall schedule.
Hearn didn’t say who Golovkin’s opponent will be, but Szeremeta (21-0, 5 KOs), GGG’s IBF mandatory, has previously been mentioned as the fighter that he’ll be facing next.
That’s not the type of opponent that Golovkin needs to compete with the much more talked about fight between IBF/WBC welterweight champion Spence (26-0, 21 KOs) and Danny ‘Swift’ Garcia (36-2, 21 KOs) on November 21.
Golovkin vs. Szeremeta not a compelling fight
Even though Golovkin’s fight with the Polish fighter Szeremeta is on DAZN, which many boxing fans already have subscriptions for, it’s not a compelling enough struggle to draw people from the Spence vs. Garcia match on FOX.
💥🥊 pic.twitter.com/pESo803BdM
— Gennadiy Golovkin (@GGGBoxing) September 24, 2020
Unless Golovkin has other ideas of substituting a better known and more desirable opponent like Demetrius Andrade in Szeremeta’s place for November 21, the number of new subscriptions for DAZN for the Golovkin-Szeremeta fight will likely be deficient.
Golovkin has chosen to get his IBF mandatory defense against Szeremeta out of the way well before the International Boxing Federation has called has ordered the fight. He didn’t have to fight Szeremeta now. This is a fight that Golovkin and his team wanted now to clear the way for him to face Canelo Alvarez in May 2021, possibly.
Considering that Golovkin wants the fight with Szeremeta, the best thing for him to do would be to reschedule it on a different date rather than compete with the Spence vs. Garcia match on the same night.
If Golovkin’s management moved his fight with Szeremeta, 30, to November 28 or December 5, it would be smoother sailing. GGG wouldn’t need to worry about Spence-Garcia hogging all the attention on the night, leaving his mismatch, I mean, fight against Szeremeta in the dust.
When you look at it, Golovkin has got an inferior opponent for him to be opposing the Spence-Garcia match. Moreover, GGG and his management haven’t even started marketing the Szeremeta fight, which is troubling.
The U.S fans no little about Szeremeta
With so little known about Szeremeta, Golovkin’s management team should have already started building the fight by sending out press releases and having something said about it. If Golovkin were facing a more prominent name, he could wait until the last month before the fight before his management and DAZN started to market the war.
That’s not the case here. Szeremeta is a fighter that fans are not familiar with in the United States. Few of them will remember his recent performance in knocking out journeyman Oscar Cortes in the 2nd round on October 5 on the undercard of Golovkin vs. Sergiy Derevyanchenko at Madison Square Garden in New York. Szeremeta looked good in that fight, but his opponent was inferior, and it looked like a showcase type of match for the Polish fighter.
Showcase fights work when the opponent being used is a recognizable name, and if the contest is high enough on the card to be seen by the average boxing fans. In this case, Szeremeta vs. Cortes was buried so far down on the Golovkin-Derevyanchenko undercard for it to be noticed or remembered by fans.
It’s unknown if DAZN has any say-so about Golovkin choosing to face Szeremeta on November 21 because the date is a horrible one, to begin with, due to Spence vs. Garcia taking place on the same night. If Golovkin is going to compete with a fight of that magnitude, he needs someone that will attract boxing fans.
Golovkin would do well facing one of these fighters on November 21:
- Demetrius Andrade
- Tim Tszyu
- Brian Castano
- Erislandy Lara
- Daniel Jacobs
- Callum Smith
- Billy Joe Saunders
- Caleb Plant
- David Benavidez