?Anyone who still thinks Golovkin is ?hype? is a dipshit. There?s really no other way to put that.??Doug Fischer
No reason to be in lockstep agreement with Doug Fischer. I asked The Ring?s associate editor for his opinion of Carmen Basilio shortly after the death of the much-lamented middleweight and welterweight champ. According to Fischer, Basilio is ?one of the 10 best welterweights of all time,? but not a great middleweight. ?He had the right style and mentality to deal with a 37-year-old version of Robinson (who was still a monster) but he fell short against the top middleweights of the late ?50s/early ?60s that he faced (Gene Fullmer and Paul Pender). He beat Art Aragon, Gaspar Ortega and Don Jordan at middleweight, but those three were blown-up welterweights, which is what Basilio was.?
If you?ll forgive the piratical language: Bushwa! It goes without saying, but I?m saying it anyway: Basilio is among the top 15 middleweights of all time (I have him at number 11), as well as an all-around best, who participated in five consecutive Ring Fights of the Year (against Tony DeMarco in ?55, Johnny Saxton in ?56, Sugar Ray Robinson in ?57, Robinson in ?58, and Fullmer in ?59), a Round of the Year (the second round of his 1953 bout with Kid Gavilan), and was Ring?s Fighter of the Year for 1957, the year he took the middleweight crown from the great Sugar Ray.
I also disagree with Fischer that those who persist in denying Gennady Golovkin?s quality are best described as ?dipshits.? But with that necessary tug of the forelock to civility, Fischer?s assessment of the power-punching Kazakh is very much on target.
I?m a pretty good judge of horseflesh, at least when it comes to boxers, and I submit that Golovkin is a plausible and likely candidate for a word too easily and lightly bandied about: Great.
?GGG? has yet to warrant the appellation, to be sure. He hasn?t faced, albeit through no fault of his own, fellow titlists Sergio Martinez, Daniel Geale, and Peter Quillin, or even Felix Sturm or Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. All good fights?and all wins for the Kazakh. Martinez is too decrepit and Geale too feather-fisted, as is Quillin, who couldn?t finish off Hassan N?Dam N?Jikam despite six knockdowns. Sturm is past it and Chavez sports a clown nose.
Given that those much-anticipated bouts have yet to take place, it?s too soon to add a fourth ?G,? for ?Great,? to Golovkin?s moniker. In fact, of my all-time top 10 middleweights, I can think of only two Golovkin might possibly beat today: Rocky Graziano and Marvelous Marvin Hagler.
Graziano, who practically destroyed the highly touted Billy Arnold, and a veteran of three all-out wars with Tony Zale? Hagler, who successfully defended his title against the likes of Vito Antuofermo, Roberto Duran, and Thomas Hearns?
Well, if not today?
Point me toward tomorrow.
