Even though the September 8 super-middleweight showdown between Andre Ward and Chad Dawson is at the forefront of this month?s matchups, there?s a lot of action going on one division south. On Saturday, there was a middleweight-title unification bout between WBA ?super? (don?t ask) champion Felix Sturm and IBF king Daniel Geale, and Gennady Golovkin defended his WBA ?regular? (please don?t ask) belt against Grzegorz Proska. On September 15, lineal and Ring magazine champion Sergio Martinez faces WBC title-holder Julio Cesar Chavez Jr.
Five of the six fighters involved in these bouts hold world titles of some kind or other. The odd man out, Proska, is in The Ring?s Top 10. For aficionados of the 160-pounders, it doesn?t get any better than this, other than a resurrection of Sugar Ray Robinson.
Saturday?s fights resulted in a close decision and a brutal blowout. The close decision was the one Geale gained over Sturm in the latter?s home base, Germany. Two judges gave it to Geale by scores of 116-114. The other saw it in Sturm?s favor by the same tally.
For eight years, Sturm has clung to the coattails of a controversial points loss to Oscar De La Hoya. Most observers and commentators believed that Sturm was robbed; that the judges were blinded by the fame flashing from ?The Golden Boy.? Sturm went on to gain success as WBA middleweight champ. He was even the beneficiary of a couple of questionable verdicts of his own: a disputed decision over Matthew Macklin and a draw with Martin Murray.
The coattails of the De La Hoya fight finally frayed apart for Sturm on Saturday. He wasn?t robbed. He just came out on the short end of a decision that could have gone either way, and this time his hometown advantage didn?t help him. Sturm?s career is hardly over. However, Geale is the fresher face in the division, and he now holds two major belts ? at least until the alphabet boys pull off a strip act that will make Geale look like Prince Harry in Las Vegas.
Golovkin provided the blowout, knocking Proska down three times en route to a fifth-round stoppage win. Proska was the underdog going in, but he was hardly considered a slouch. Yet Golovkin made him look like an overmatched ?opponent.? The win improves Golovkin?s record to 24-0, with 22 KOs. In today?s boxing game, power talks and the pop in Golovkin?s punches speaks volumes. And he?s not just a one-dimensional bomber; he can box when he wants to. The question is, can he box if he has to? Hard-punching super-middleweight Lucian Bute couldn?t when he came up against Carl Froch, and he paid the price.
So now two new stars twinkle in the middleweight division: Geale the boxer and Golovkin the banger. Of course, neither of them outshines Martinez and Chavez Jr. Martinez is one of the top three pound-for-pound fighters in the world, and Chavez is finally living up to his Hall of Fame father?s example. Their fight promises to be a grudge match, as Martinez has traded trash talk with both Chavez Jr. and Sr. What looked at first like a mismatch, with Martinez too talented and experienced for the younger Chavez, now appears to be a competitive contest ? possibly. The 38-year-old Martinez could age overnight, and the bigger Chavez could take advantage of that the way Chad Dawson did against Bernard Hopkins earlier this year. We?ll see.
The middleweights were in the doldrums after Hopkins lost twice to Jermain Taylor and moved up to light-heavy. Neither Taylor nor his successor, Kelly Pavlik, inspired sustained excitement. Martinez did for a while after he beat up Pavlik and flattened Paul Williams. But then he seemed to be marking time while waiting for a superfight with Manny Pacquiao, or Floyd Mayweather Jr., to materialize out of thin air. Now, with either Golovkin or Geale poised to take on the winner of Martinez-Chavez, not to mention each other, the division that produced Robinson, Ketchel, Greb and Hagler is on the rise again.
Charles R. Saunders is the author of several books including Sweat and Soul: The Saga of Black Boxers in the Maritimes from the Halifax Forum to Caesars Palace, as well as the Imaro series of fantasy/adventure novels. Considered by many to be one of the leading authorities on boxing in Canada, he is the current Vice-President of Boxing for the Society of North American Sports Historians and Researchers. His award-winning novel, Damballa, which centers around a fictional heavyweight title bout, is available at Amazon.com.
