Stop me if you’ve heard the one about the middleweight who was too good to get a big fight, the prodigious talent who time and again found himself on the raw end of the elemental risk-versus-reward calculus at matchmaking’s essence. Once upon a time it was Charley Burley, described by no less estimable fistic minds than Eddie Futch and Ray Arcel as the greatest all-round fighter either had ever set eyes on, whose formidable ability and skin color in the 1940s cruelly conspired to earn him the unenviable title of best ever boxer to never be granted a world title shot. In another day it was Marvelous Marvin Hagler, avoided like the dentist throughout the 1970s until he could be sidestepped no longer, to whom Joe Frazier once warned: “You got three strikes against you. One, you’re a southpaw. Two, you’re good. And three, you’re black.”
Today it’s Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin, the charismatic Kazakh knockout artist known as Triple G, who has torn through boxing’s 160lb division with a rare blend of patience, technique, unnerving pressure and devastating power in either hand. Unbeaten in 36 pro fights with 33 knockouts, he’s like a middleweight Tyson without the baggage. Even before Canelo Álvarez’s win over Miguel Cotto for the WBC and lineal middleweight titles in November 2015 – and certainly since then – a showdown between the Mexican superstar and Golovkin for all the marbles in boxing’s glamour division has loomed as the biggest fight that can be made today. Golovkin was then one month removed from an eight-round obliteration of David Lemieux to unify the WBA and IBF belts in his pay-per-view debut. The fruit would never be riper.
But Álvarez has since vacated that middleweight strap, and the blockbuster, curiously, feels further away from being made today than it did then, leaving Golovkin to fight just twice last year: a five-minute wipeout of mandatory challenger Dominic Wade followed by a high-profile stoppage of Kell Brook that represented his 23rd consecutive knockout, a streak dating back to when he was fighting eight-rounders during George W Bush’s administration.
On Tuesday, Golovkin was in New York to announce his next fight with Brooklyn native Daniel Jacobs on 18 March at Madison Square Garden. Once again, he is a lopsided favorite, even if the opponent, this time, is hardly the walkover the oddsmakers suggest. Jacobs holds a version of the WBA middleweight title, and the fight offers Golovkin the opportunity to effectively own all but the WBO strap currently held by Billy Joe Saunders, who himself is in no hurry to go in with GGG. And who can blame him?
The Kazakh has one of those faces that seems to default to a grin, but on Tuesday he wore a less familiar look of consternation as he explained his frustration with “trash talking” from would-be opponents. Golovkin, whose broken-English bon mots have endeared him to fans as much as his crowd-pleasing style, struggled to express what was bothering him during a roundtable with reporters, allowing his promoter Tom Loeffler to intercede.
“It’s the fighters that haven’t agreed to fight him in the ring trash-talking, saying we want to fight Triple G,” Loeffler reasoned. “From Canelo to Saunders to [Chris Eubank Jr], even Carl Froch jumped in at one point. It seems the people who are least likely to fight him are the people who talk the most about fighting him. That’s the frustrating part.
“He wants to show he’s the best. The only way he can do that is to fight the best. There have been some criticisms about some of the opponents on his résumé, but it’s certainly not anything to do with our side. You can’t force someone to get in the ring with him. All we can do is make offers. We give Kell Brook a ton of credit because when three of the top middleweights in the world turned down the opportunity to fight Gennady, he stepped up and he took the same exact deal that was on the table for Eubank.”
Any man who takes up the gloves and steps into the ring is worthy of respect, but the instinct is somehow felt more acutely when the man waiting inside the square circle is Golovkin, who has delivered one career-altering beating after another.
Thusly, Jacobs, who turns 30 in February, is preparing for the fight of his life. Looking to escape the cold weather, media demands and unavoidable distractions of a training camp in his hometown, Jacobs has added Virgil Hunter in an advisory role to complement longtime trainer Andre Rozier and will open a nine-week camp on Thursday at Hunter’s King’s Boxing Gym in Oakland, where he expects to share training quarters with a world-class stable that includes Andre Ward, Amir Khan and Andre Berto. He’s enlisted Avtandil Khurtsidze, Sergiy Derevyanchenko and Ievgen Khytrov as his main sparring partners, whom he’s confident will offer didactic simulations, if piecemeal, of the power, boxing skill and pressure that Golovkin will bring.
“It would represent the pinnacle of my career,” Jacobs said. “I’m happy that it’s going to be a guy who people consider one of the most feared guys. I’ve never had anything easy. I don’t want anything easy. When people pray that they can have the easy route, I just pray that I can overcome the hard obstacles. Being an 8-to-1 underdog, I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Surely Jacobs knows a thing or two about beating the odds. Six years ago, he was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a life-threatening form of bone cancer. After a series of procedures at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center to remove the quarter-sized tumor that had coiled around his spine and caused partial paralysis in his legs, he began the long road back to the ring through outpatient physical rehabilitation.
Nineteen months later, the fighter once known as the Golden Child resumed his journey under a new moniker: the Miracle Man. Then last year, Jacobs stunned Peter Quillin by first-round knockout to capture the ‘regular’ version of the WBA middleweight title, extending a 12-fight knockout streak of his own.
Jacobs, who says he’s been studying Golovkin for nearly two years, insists he spots flaws in Golovkin that other fighters have exposed but not exploited. One tape he’s returned to is the fighter’s 2011 bout with Kassim Ouma, whom he believes was more of a handful for GGG than any other recent opponent.
“He’s not hard to hit,” Jacobs said on Tuesday. “What are his strengths? He cuts the ring off very well, obviously his power, and he has a pretty decent jab. Minimizing his strengths with my assets is the plan. I know what I have to do.”
Abel Sanchez, Golovkin’s trainer, spoke highly of Jacobs’ ability and acumen and embraces the challenge the Brownsville native will offer.
“I would say he’s probably the best fighter we will have fought to date,” Sanchez said. “A better amateur, great right hand, good boxing IQ. Danny is smart. He’s going to be a big threat to us.
“But the frustration of people talking trash and Danny not talking and finally stepping up to the plate, that excites us. [Golovkin] is excited about the fight and that’s very important to us in the gym. He has a good right hand and he’s a sharp puncher, but nobody goes 12 rounds with Gennady. He will eventually get to him, he will wear him down, he will land his shot and he’ll put him out.”
There seems little doubt Golovkin’s frustration will serve him well against Jacobs, but what of the future? What of the unspoken fear it could all feel incomplete without Álvarez, who is eight years younger and could theoretically wait for Golovkin’s formidable gifts to slip before consenting to terms?
That, Golovkin assured the gaggle of reporters, is a concern for another day. He remains fully focused on the task at hand.
“I’m not God, I’m a boxer,” he said, the magnetic grin of the happy warrior finally winning out. “This is boxing.”
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