Gennady Golovkin has retained his multiple middleweight world titles and continues to be one of the most dominant and exciting boxers on the planet.
Saturday’s fight against unheralded challenger Dominic Wade took less than six minutes. In the first round, Golovkin, of Kazakhstan, dropped Wade with a right to the temple. It didn’t appear to be a clean shot, but Wade didn’t seem overly committed to continuing. In round two, as the crowd chanted “Triple G!”, Golovkin dropped Wade again with a clean right hook. Wade rose tentatively. Golovkin pounced again, hitting his overwhelmed opponent with another right hook and Wade dropped to his knees. After the third knockdown, the American couldn’t beat the count.
In the lead-up to the fight, Wade, 25, was petulant in his comments, obviously irritated that he was considered a lamb to the slaughter (he was installed as a 15-1 underdog). He hinted that he would play defense, pick his spots to gain points and frustrate Golovkin (35-0, 32 KOs). He muttered that he would “shock the world”, predicting an upset on the order of Buster Douglas’ defeat of Mike Tyson in 1990.
Instead, he looked timid from the outset of Saturday’s spectacle, and will now be counted as another victim of Golovkin’s powerful hands and perfect distance control.
“His power is real,” said Wade (18-1, 12 KOs). “I tried to get comfortable. Once he started hitting me, I couldn’t do that. He is a great champion. … He does everything well.”
The fight was held before 16,353 fans at the Forum and televised on HBO. It was Golovkin’s 16th consecutive middleweight world title defense – now four short of Bernard Hopkins’ division record – GGG’s 22nd consecutive knockout, extending a streak dating back nearly a decade. His sublime performance will put pressure on Saul “Canelo” Alvarez to agree to boxing’s next super-fight. Alvarez faces Amir Khan on 7 May. Khan fans aside, the boxing public hope Alvarez will win, then agree to a fight with Golovkin.
Alvarez is an icon in boxing-mad Mexico and holds the WBC middleweight belt, which means if he doesn’t fight Golovkin he will be stripped of his title and it will go to the 34-year-old Kazakh. Golovkin wants to unify the middleweight division (he currently holds the WBA, IBF, IBO titles and WBC interim belt) and is itching to fight the Mexican. “Give me my belt!” Golovkin told the Forum crowd, who cheered and laughed. “I want my belt!”
If the two hard-punching, charismatic middleweights get in the ring this fall, it would help erase the boxing hangover created by last year’s Floyd Mayweather-Manny Pacquiao, which cost pay-per-view viewers $100 in the US for a boring spectacle, creating yet more disillusionment around the sport.
In Saturday’s co-feature Roman ‘Chocolatito’ Gonzalez, the world’s best pound-for-pound boxer, retained his WBC flyweight title in a unanimous decision (119-109, 119-109, 120-108) against McWilliams Arroyo of Puerto Rico.
Gonzalez started slowly but picked up the pace starting in the second round, and never stopped showing excellent ring generalship and a wide array of punches, landing more than twice as many power punches than Arroyo. The Puerto Rican, who had a celebrated amateur career, couldn’t match the output and the power of Gonzalez, who landed 311 power punches to 148 for Arroyo (16-3, 14 KOs). The only sore point for Gonzalez: his consecutive knockout streak ended at 10. “This proved that I can go the distance as well as win by knockout,” Gonzalez said.
Like Golovkin in his weight class, the 28-year-old Gonzalez (45-0, 38 KOs) has seemed to run out of opponents. A few days ago, at a media interview, Gonzalez was repeatedly spitting in a cup, an old boxing method to lose weight. Was he struggling with his current weight class? “Everything in life is hard,” he said. “105 pounds [minimum weight], 108 [light flyweight]. Making 112 [the flyweight limit] hasn’t been as hard, but it’s always difficult.” Gonzalez said he plans to have one more flyweight defense and then jump to a heavier weight class.
On Saturday, both headliners – Golovkin and Gonzalez – thrilled the audience with their brilliant range of skills, but their fights are starting to feel like glorified exhibition matches. It’s the price of greatness.
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