WBA middleweight champ, Gennady Golovkin is one of boxing’s best offensive fighters and a joy to watch for those who enjoy the manly art of clinical and thorough boxing destruction.
Also true of the Kazakhstani middleweight belt holder, already ten fights into his title reign, is that he has achieved this massive reputation as master destructor while facing an overall subpar level of competition. As a matter of fact, Golvkin has yet to face a top 5 middleweight and, really, only has one legitimate top 10 name on his resume.
As of now, Golvkin’s career high water marks have come against fringe top 10 fighter, Matthew Macklin; overmatched middleweight gatekeeper-types like Curtis Stevens and Gregorz Proksa; and junior middleweight imports, Gabriel Rosado and Kassim Ouma.
Yes, Golovkin wins impressively and one look at the 31-year-old offensive machine will tell you that he definitely has the goods. What he does, he does very well.
So, why the relative kid gloves?
Team Golovkin and his many supporters will tell you that the top fighters in his division are simply avoiding Golovkin. And while it’s true to some extent that guys like Sergio Martinez, Felix Sturm, and Peter Quillin would be slow to risk a loss when just as much money could be had fighting someone else, there’s also some matchmaking sleight of hand going on when it comes to “Triple G.”
The knock on the powerhouse from the Eastern Bloc is not necessarily that he hasn’t fought a top guy, but that he really hasn’t been matched tough at all. We’ve yet to see what Golovkin could do against a fighter who can execute a world class defense or, for that matter, have the ring IQ to stick to a smart, coherent game plan. Instead, fight after fight, chum gets fed to the shark and the Triple G reputation grows.
This assessment could’ve been proven wrong had Erislandy Lara had his way.
“How about you @gggboxing me fight you anytime! #badboyvsgoodboy,” Lara wrote on his personal Twitter account.
The Cuban star’s willingness to fight Golovkin was confirmed shortly after by his manager, Luis DeCubas Jr.:
“Yes. I spoke to Lara today and he wants to fight GGG,” DeCubas told Boxingscene. “He feels they are both the most feared guys in boxing so why not fight each other.”
The match-up would involve the junior middleweight Lara moving up one division and being allowed to leave Showtime for one bout in order to fight on Golovkin’s home network of HBO. According to DeCubas, though, the network situation wouldn’t be a deal-killing obstacle.
However, almost as soon as the story came out and fans began to pass the word, the idea was killed by Team Golovkin.
“He [Lara] is not approved by HBO and never on our radar, he should be calling out Quillin, if he wins, he becomes interesting,” Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler of K2 Promotions said via Twitter. “Lara fights on Showtime and had draws with Vanes and Molina, GGG vs Stevens=high ratings, who watches Lara? Lara fights on Showtime and is Jr Middle, why would he be on our radar?”
In other words, Golovkin will be refusing Lara for many of the same reasons others are refusing Golovkin. And to make matters worse Loeffler is brushing off the Lara challenge because Lara is a junior middleweight despite his guy having fought plenty of converted 154 lb. fighters.
Through this all, it should be clear to see that Team Golovkin, just like every other elite-level management team in the sport, is concerned with the risk to reward ratio when it comes to who their fighter will face.
Macho posturing aside, boxing is a business and even the most feared man in boxing is concerned with looking good against the right type of opponent.
