Danny Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) gave IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) the fight of his life last Saturday, and made him look human for perhaps the first time in his 10-year career at the professional level. Normally that would be seen as a bad thing for Golovkin, but it’s actually a very thing the 34-year-old Kazakhstan fighter.
Golovkin now has Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, his promoters Golden Boy and WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders all looking to setup a fight with him. The sad thing is all it took for Golovkin to get a fight against one of them was for him to look less than perfect against Jacobs in their fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.
Golovkin is now seen as no longer invincible by his opponents, and he’s finding himself popular all of a sudden.
What was peculiar about the Jacobs fight was how Golovkin backed off and threw jabs at him after knocking him down in round 4. That was huge change-up from the way that Golovkin has fought in the past. He used go after his opponents with big power shots to try and finish them off after he’d gotten then in trouble.
The way that Golovkin backed off against Jacobs, it makes me wonder if he did it intentionally in order to let him survive just so that he could look vulnerable to Canelo and Saunders. It wasn’t just the 4th round in which Golovkin threw jabs. He was doing it during the entire fight. It was very strange, because he had no reason to give Jacobs any real respect because the guy looked absolutely petrified inside the ring.
“I believe I shocked a lot of people tonight because I was definitely the underdog,” said Jacobs. “When you’re an underdog like I was, and when you go the distance and you fight back and you hurt the fighter and you show what you have inside of you, this is boxing.”
Jacobs can keep talking, but he’s not going to get a rematch with Golovkin until he puts some wind under his belt and makes more of an impact in the sport. Golovkin has bigger things on his agenda now with him going after Canelo and Saunders. Those are the money fights. Saunders will likely be next in June followed by Canelo in September. Jacobs did his part by giving Golovkin enough headaches to make him look vulnerable. You have to thank Jacobs because he did his job well in getting Canelo and Saunders to want to fight Golovkin.
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