Ranking the Best Opponents for Gennady Golovkin's Next Fight
Let the debate over Gennady Golovkin begin. Again.
Those who don't believe the multi-belted middleweight champion was at his best during a five-round tussle with reigning welterweight claimant Kell Brook on Saturday will surely have their reasons locked and loaded.
Those who say Golovkin is everything he's advertised to be may suggest he didn't feel good, but still got away with a decisive win.
Meanwhile, those who insist he's being pushed too hard by a cable television powerhouse could offer that he finally was tested by a qualified, albeit outgunned opponent.
Either way, it's hard to argue that the four-plus rounds offered up at the O2 Arena were the most compelling of Golovkin's five-year reign at 160.
Brook won a round or two according to many scorecards—Bleacher Report had it even, 38-38—before an extended flurry by Golovkin in the fifth prompted Brook's trainer, Dominic Ingle, to toss in the towel as a sign of surrender.
Brook told HBO's Jim Lampley and Bernard Hopkins that Ingle made the call due to an injury to Brook's right eye that was suffered early in the fight and got progressively worse as the rounds, and the punishment, mounted.
Still, the Englishman, who suffered his first loss in 37 fights, was disappointed.
"Absolutely (I could have kept fighting). It should have carried on," he said. "Dom has seen me since I was nine years old, so I don't know what he's seeing from the outside, but I wanted to carry on. If you're going to beat me, knock me out. I'm a competitor. I'm very frustrated."
As for Golovkin and his trainer, Abel Sanchez, they claimed the end was near whether Ingle conceded or not.
"Kell is good fighter. But he is not middleweight," Golovkin told HBO, while rating his performance a "3 or 4" on a scale from 1 to 10. "I wanted to bring a big drama show like a street fight. I feel like it was finished, it was over. Maybe a couple rounds more and that's it. I didn't feel any power."
Sanchez, whose man has now knocked out 23 in a row since 2008, agreed.
"He was trying too hard to knock Kell out," Sanchez said. "I told him to 'just beat on him, beat on him, practice.' The corner did the right thing. At that point when they stopped it, it was over. Eventually he was going to hurt him permanently."
Golovkin is now 36-0 with 33 KOs and the win was another step toward bigger and better things. Toward that end, we've compiled a handful of possibilities to discuss as next in line between him and 37-0.
Some are realistic. Others far less so. And some are just fun to think about.
Got an opinion of your own? Feel free to register your views in the comments section.
5. Daniel Jacobs
1 of 5
And now, as today's entrant in the "Oh sure, I'd love to fight Gennady Golovkin, honest," sweepstakes, we present Daniel Jacobs.
The popular New York-based middleweight calls himself a world champion based on the dubious "regular" WBA title belt he possesses as a second banana to Golovkin's "super" status, and he took to Twitter after Saturday's fight to claim he's ready to settle the sanctioning body's dilemma once and for all.
"I said it yesterday and I'm saying it again," he tweeted. "Let's dance good boy."
Jacobs was feeling his oats after a five-knockdown pummeling of Sergio Mora on Friday, his 12th straight victory—all by stoppage—since a fifth-round KO by Dmitry Pirog in a WBO title try five years ago that remains his only loss in 33 bouts.
The Mora win came nine months after Jacobs' most significant win as a pro, a one-round blitz of former WBO champ Peter Quillin, and at least has him on the radar of Golovkin and his machinery.
"If we can make that fight in the future that would be a great fight," Golovkin's promoter, Tom Loeffler, told BoxingScene.com. "And if we can make it for Madison Square Garden—Gennady has sold out the Garden and Jacobs is from New York—that would be a huge promotion."
4. Billy Joe Saunders
2 of 5
Somewhere in his heart of hearts, Billy Joe Saunders has to be thrilled Gennady Golovkin exists.
Not because he's all that interested in fighting him, mind you. But rather because as long as Saunders holds the one middleweight championship belt (the WBO title) Golovkin doesn't have, he's always going to hear his name called in post-fight interviews.
It happened again Saturday after the end of the Kell Brook fight, when Golovkin told HBO's team of Jim Lampley and Bernard Hopkins that it was Saunders' trinket he was most enamored with for his next fight.
"My goal is all the belts," he said. "I need my last belt."
As long as Saunders has the belt, he'll have leverage.
Once the fight is made, though, it presumably won't last long.
The 27-year-old Englishman is 23-0 with 12 KOs in a pro career that stretches back to 2009, but none of the foes he's toppled—Chris Eubank Jr. and Andy Lee among them—inspire any sort of confidence that he'll be able to handle an opponent like Golovkin.
And, in the estimation of Team Golovkin, it was reticence on the part of Saunders and Eubank that made the Brook fight necessary in the first place. So if you're holding your breath waiting on this one, here's a little unsolicited advice:
Don't.
3. Canelo Alvarez
3 of 5
For a few hours in May at least, we all believed in Canelo Alvarez.
He recovered from a substandard start to disintegrate Amir Khan with a single right hand, then flipped a middleweight championship belt across his shoulder, sidled up alongside HBO's Max Kellerman and brusquely told everyone what they wanted to hear.
Particularly Golovkin, who was there at ringside.
"Let me tell you," he said to Kellerman. "In Mexico, we don't f--k around. We don’t come to play in this sport. I fear no one in this sport. We can fight right now, we’ll put on the gloves again."
Problem was, the bravado lasted about as long as the perspiration.
Once cooler, more business-like heads prevailed, Alvarez and Co. instead decided to relinquish their claim on 160-pound supremacy and left Golovkin to his own devices while they chose to pursue a 154-pound title belt against anonymous Englishman Liam Smith next week in Texas.
The prospect of a Golovkin fight is still teased for sometime next year by the fighter and his promotional apparatus, but the clear lack of urgency to get it done has gone a long way toward sapping the interest.
Particularly when there are bigger, more willing fish to fry.
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2. Sergey Kovalev
4 of 5
Few fighters in the world equal the menace Sergey Kovalev possesses.
Golovkin, though, is one of them.
He’s had a title belt since late 2011 and has seen his profile rise significantly, thanks to a consecutive KO streak that stretches back to an eight-round decision over something called Amar Amari back in 2008.
The run of stoppages hasn’t exactly left opponents champing at the bit to get at Golovkin, which has helped build his brand as the most-avoided fighter in boxing and led to past claims that he’d go anywhere from 154 to 168 pounds to secure a match with a big name.
Golovkin and Kovalev have sparred together in the past, and each has worked with trainer Abel Sanchez, who said Kovalev was “afraid of Golovkin when he was in the ring,” according to HustleBoss.com. Clearly, Triple-G is still on the mind of the Russian light heavyweight, who told Bleacher Report last year he’d be willing to engage his former training partner if the fight were made in his weight class.
Should the full 160-pound unification opportunity Golovkin seeks not materialize, a Kovalev match is presumably one the public would accept as a violent substitute.
1. Andre Ward
5 of 5
This being boxing, it only makes sense that one of the best possible fights out there—between two highly decorated amateurs who’d evolved into unbeaten, championship-level pros—wouldn’t happen.
Instead, the mere question of Andre Ward getting into a ring with Golovkin instantly devolves into a he said/he said, with each camp accusing the other of doing its best to avoid the confrontation.
The most inflammatory salvos have seen Ward claim an offer to Team Golovkin was “turned down in five minutes” and that the Kazakh has “hoodwinked” fans, per SB Nation's Fight Hub (h/t Spencer Brown of MailOnline).
Meanwhile, Golovkin and Co. have their own version of the story, with trainer Abel Sanchez simply referring to Ward as “a liar.”
Doesn't matter. If Ward beats Sergey Kovalev later this year—and it says here he will—this one will get made. Because it has to.
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