Hola familia, amigos y enemigos. Welcome to a boiled horse meat and garlic camel brain flavored edition of Central America’s highest rated, most money-spinning weekly proper pugilistic paper, The Sunday Brunch – We are the boxing column equivalent of the traditional Kazakh sister-in-law friendship ritual of ceremoniously sharing a horse heart, aorta and fat stew.
Gennady Golovkin’s recent victory over Willie Monroe didn’t go as smoothly as some would have liked, in fact, many now see a vulnerability in Golovkin that wasn’t apparent before Saturday. Today and today only, we are taking a closer look at the five most dangerous opponents for Gennady Golovkin. So without further ado, I gave you your instructions in the dressing room; what I say you must obey – Cuidate, escucha me, toca los manos y buena suerte…Let’s get it on!
Floyd Mayweather
TBE? TMT? &#@! Whatever you want to call him, Floyd Mayweather has achieved a level of mastery in the sport of boxing that few will ever know. Based on pure skills, experience and boxing acumen, Gennady Golovkin, in a fantasy catch-weight fight with Floyd Mayweather, would likely have trouble landing his punches. GGG would find success every time he managed to connect, but would struggle to not hit the air and walk into counter punches for most of the encounter.
Miguel Cotto
Puerto Rican icon, Miguel Cotto’s experience in top level fights would serve him well for most of the battle against the Kazakhstan Kremator. After the halfway point of the match-up, though, Cotto might find an increasingly uphill battle as GGG’s powerful hooks would likely penetrate his defense and put him into survival mode. When Cotto is hurt he reverts to backpedaling and boxing, Gennady Golovkin can cut off the ring very well and the Puerto Rican might not make it to see the final bell.
Canelo Alvarez
The young Mexican warrior looks to have learned from his defeat to Floyd Mayweather back in 2013 and has since rifled off big wins against solid opposition in Alfredo Angulo, Erislandy Lara and most recently, James Kirkland. While Gennady Golovkin is physically slightly larger than Saul Alvarez, Canelo has a combination of speed and power that GGG likely hasn’t seen before. Alvarez’s deep professional experience and furiosity and Golovkin’s accuracy and power would make for must-see-T.V.. Unfortunately, while Gennady Golovkin said he wants to face the Mexican dynamo, the two fighter’s camps seem at an impasse in regards to the weight limit for this big money match-up at this time.
Carl Froch
Nottingham’s Carl Froch is coming off of a huge stoppage win over George Groves in front of nearly 60,000 people at Wembley Stadium in London last year. Since 2008, Froch has been consistently facing the best in his weight class, only dropping one legitimate decision to Andre Ward along the way (Froch also lost a controversial unanimous decision to Mikkel Kessler, which he subsequently avenged). A fight with Golovkin at Wembley stadium would be massive for the sport and both men would push each other to fight better than ever. A win for Froch would be the crown jewel in his collection, a victory for Gennady Golovkin would solidify his position as one of the best in the division.
Andre Ward
For GGG to really evolve he is going to need to face increasingly dynamic competition. Andre Ward is still on most people’s pound-for-pound radars and is arguably one of the more complete fighters of the past ten years. If Willie Monroe’s southpaw stance and varied attacks were able to push Gennady Golovkin, a rejuvenated and resharpened Andre Ward could be a nightmare for the Kazakh.
Ward’s road back to the pinnacle of the sport could be lengthy, though. The Oakland, California based super middleweight kingpin’ s recent career has been mired in legal conflicts and managerial issues. Prior to 2012, Andre Ward was fighting two to four times a year and managed to nab the crown of a brilliant (but, poorly organized) two-year contest called the Showtime Super Six World Boxing Classic. Since those key wins on his resume, Ward came back to the squared circle once in 2012 (to stop former light heavyweight champion, Chad Dawson), one time in 2013 (outpointing Edwin Rodriguez) and now is scheduled to face the UK’s Paul Smith in June of this year.
Thanks for joining us again this week. We’ll be back next Sunday with more dangling participles, run-on sentences and randomly generated text. We will be shattering creationists’ dreams and explaining science to the uninformed. We will be reviewing the Game Genie for the Nintendo Entertainment System and perhaps if there’s time left, we’ll have some boxing talk. Send all penis enlargement scams to JESSEBOXINGTRIBUNE@GMAIL.COM or unfollow us on Twitter @JESSEBOXING. Until next time, sante.
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