Gennady Golovkin vs. Steve Rolls, June 8 at Madison Square Garden?
Screw diplomacy and tact, this is a bucket of chum splattered at the feet of the Kazakh former world champ which, for a nice subscription fee payable to new broadcast home DAZN, you can enjoy the privilege of watching him slurp up.
Rolls is, by all accounts, a nice guy and he is an undefeated pro with a solid amateur pedigree, but he?s a 35-year-old prospect because, quite frankly, he?s just never been able to put it all together to be anything more than a 30-something prospect waiting on a cash-out payday like this one. All things considered, the Toronto, Ontario native would probably be in the middle of the pack if rating him alongside Golovkin?s sparring partners. Rolls ain?t beating Golovkin, even with the help of a sniper in the MSG balcony, and if all plays out true to form, he?ll be battered and stopped whenever GGG decides there?s been enough ?drama show.?
And, no, don?t try that ?Golovkin needs a tune-up? garbage.
To suggest that Golovkin needs this fight as a ?tune up? or even deserves it as a ?tune up? is absurd. His close, competitive loss to Canelo Alvarez was seven months ago and, as someone who has crowed as recently as last year about his desire to keep busy and stay busy against relevant, high-end opposition, this tune-up talk is absurd.
The fact of the matter is that Golovkin is fighting a soft touch opponent in his DAZN debut because he CAN. Consider it a signing bonus from the streaming service for coming aboard on a six-fight deal, reportedly worth in the neighborhood of $90-$120 million. If Canelo can get his Rocky Fielding for signing up, GGG can have his Steve Rolls. Golovkin is ENTITLED to it.
And that sense of entitlement has been a factor in his career since HBO brought him to America and pushed hard to turn him into a bankable star.
In a 2018 article entitled ?The Entitlement of Gennady Golovkin? for FightHype.com, this is how I broke things down, at that point referring to his team?s sense of entitlement when it came to picking a soft touch substitute opponent for Canelo Alvarez, who had been suspended after a dirty blood test:
ITALIC?Looking over a career that has been remarkably hand-rigged and filled with a copious degree of entitlement, GGG rose to prominence fighting smaller men and those stylistically tailor-made to make him look good. A casual look at Golovkin?s resume shows that of twenty ?world? title fights, at least ten have come against fighters moving up in weight from at least one division below and none?until Daniel Jacobs and Canelo Alvarez?have come against anyone with the physicality or skill level needed to even make Golovkin breathe hard.
Most interesting, though, is the fact that, while GGG ran through a minefield of deactivated mines at zero risk to himself, his people had no critical eye turned towards them at all. They?ve gotten nothing but free passes from day one and are still coasting from Sergio Martinez not fighting their guy and from two years? worth of masterful publicity generated in their pursuit of big money middleweight bouts with junior middleweights Miguel Cotto and Canelo Alvarez.
After years and years of beating up who he wants with zero criticism as to opponent selection, is it any mystery why his people now feel entitled to yet another softball??ITALIC END
What was true then, is true now. Different network, same sense of entitlement.
This time, though, subscribers to DAZN should be paying attention to a pretty major detail as GGG is curb-stomping Steve Rolls. As of Golovkin-Rolls on June 8, the streaming service, which promised high-end boxing?and lots of it?for budget prices will have only produced one fight in nine months (Canelo Alvarez vs. Daniel Jacobs) that could be considered an HBO Championship Boxing-level main event (two, if you count the Anthony Joshua fight on June 1).
Maybe the good fights are coming after their stars get a soft touch apiece tossed their way. Maybe.
But it?s going to be hard to get someone in the ring for a really risky fight if they know eight figures can be made fighting much, much lighter opposition. This is the nature of man?even feared Kazakh, killer, drama show-making, good boy supermen.
