Jacobs won’t last long against Golovkin if he slugs

By Allan Fox: After six years of facing largely soft opposition, Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) has been ordered by the World Boxing Association to face IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs).

The two fighters’ management has negotiated the fight, and it’s now signed, sealed and delivered for March 18 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Jacobs is going to crumble early in this fight in the first two rounds if he gets hit with anything from Golovkin in my opinion.

The punches that Golovkin landed against welterweight Kell Brook in the 1st round in their fight on September 10, they’d finish Jacobs off in my view. Jacobs does take shots well at all. I’ve followed Jacobs’ career since he first turned pro, and he’s never looked good when taking any kind of a decent shot. Fortunately for Jacobs, he’s only fought one good fighter in his career in Dmitry Pirog. That fight resulted in a knockout loss for Jacobs.

Jacobs is a good fighter, but he’s developed many bad habits in the ring from his many mismatches against incredibly poor opposition. These bad habits are going to be carrying over into the Golovkin fight. There’s no way of Jacobs changing his stripes at this point, because his flawed fighting style has taken him to this point. He’s not going to change now. If you look at Jacobs’ last two fights against Sergio Mora and Peter Quillin, he left himself open constantly and was hit. Jacobs was getting hit from the outside. The only time that he did well was when Mora and Quillin stopped throwing punches.

Jacobs’ best and possibly only chance of beating GGG is if he boxes and moves for 12 rounds. In other words, Jacobs needs to use the same game plan that Kell Brook was using in his recent fight against Golovkin. That’s only chance that Jacobs has of winning against Triple G in my opinion.

Jacobs’ punch resistance is way too weak for him to be able to last long against Golovkin. In fact, I don’t see Jacobs getting the 2nd round. His punch resistance is by far the weakest of anyone that Golovkin has faced in a long, long time. If you don’t believe me, take a look at how the weak punching Sergio Mora had Jacobs out on his feet in their first fight in 2015. Mora tapped Jacobs with a left hook that put him down and him ready to be knocked out after he got back to his feet.

Mora wasn’t smart enough to realize that he needed to empty his tank to try and finish Jacobs. Mora must have thought that Jacobs wasn’t hurt, because he backed off instead of moving in to finish him. That lack of imitative that Mora showed cost him the fight, because he injured his ankle in the 2nd round, causing the fight to be halted.

Jacobs is going to likely try and move and jab as much as possible. The problem is I don’t think that he’s going to be able to keep Golovkin off of him for any length of time. Golovkin is too good at cutting off the ring on his opponents. Further, if Jacobs is able to have any kind of success on the outside with his jabs and pot shot right hands, Golovkin is going to steam forward and turn the fight into an inside war. That’s not a fight that Jacobs can win unfortunately.

The reason is because Jacobs looks to land single pot shots even in close. Jacobs won’t want to try and open up with a flurry of shots against Golovkin like he did against Mora and Quillin. If Jacobs tries to flurry on Golovkin like he did those fighters, he’s going to get caught with something and taken out FAST. The fight will end potentially in the 1st round for Jacobs if he gets foolish and tries to open up with his punches.

Jacobs couldn’t even handle Mora and Ishe Smith’s punching power. If he can’t even take their power, then how is he going to be able to handle Golovkin’s shots? He won’t. Like I said, Golovkin’s other recent opponents had better chins than Jacobs. The shots that Golovkin was hitting Willie Monroe Jr. with early on in their fight would knock Jacobs out in the opening round.

If Jacobs gets hit with ANYTHING by Golovkin in the 1st or 2nd round, then fight is going to be over. Once Jacobs is hurt, he’s finished. Golovkin will finish him off with a flurry. He’s not going to make a dumb mistake like Mora and let Jacobs off the hook when he’s on wobbly legs. Golovkin is going to put Jacobs of his misery as fast as possible.

Jacobs is a good fighter, but I rate as another Quillin. In other words, Jacobs is a guy with good power, and excellent athleticism, but a weak chin and MANY years of soft match-making that has helped disguise his flawed boxing skills and weak chin. Thanks to Jacobs’ soft match-making, he never got the opportunity to improve his game to make him a better fighter.

That’s unfortunate, because he’s going to be coming into the GGG fight as basically the same fighter that was knocked out quickly by Dmitry Pirog in 2010. Pirog knew what he had in front of him in Jacobs, which is why he pressured him nonstop from the opening bell and made sure he hit him as hard as possible with every shot.

Jacobs did not take well to getting hit hard, and he was in the retreat mode from the word go. Jacobs can dish out punishment, but he can’t take it for anything. That’s another one of his problems. Jacobs is all offense and no defense. His offense is his defense. He either gets to you or you get to him. But all the poor opponents that Jacobs has fought in the last six years, he’s not had to worry about getting hurt by anyone. Look at the guys that Jacobs has fought since his loss to Pirog:

Sergio Mora x 2

Peter Quillin

Jesse Orta

Robert Kliewere

Josh Luteran

Chris Fitzpatrick

Giovanni Lorenzo

Milton Nunez

Jarrod Fletcher

Caleb Truax

It’s sad how Jacobs’ management has burned through six years of his career matching him against those fighters since his loss to Pirog. They did a good job of turning Jacobs into a champion so that he could make money, but he didn’t beat anyone good to become a champion. Jacobs only had to fight Jarrod Fletcher to win the vacant World Boxing Association middleweight title in 2014. Fletcher is more of a fringe contender/2nd tier fighter than a true contender. The WBA made it easy for Jacobs to win a world title. If Pirog was still around, Jacobs would have been blown out of the water if that was the guy he had to fight for the title.

For Jacobs’ sake, he needs to try and box Golovkin and hope that he gets tired late in the fight, because if he tries to punch with him at all early, he’s getting knocked out straightaway. Jacobs’ chin is too much like butter in my estimation. Chin-wise, Jacobs is no matter than Dominic Wade, a fighter that Golovkin knocked out in 2 rounds last April at the Forum in Inglewood, California.

Jacobs has better punching power than Wade and hand speed, but he doesn’t have a better chin. That’s Jacobs’ whole problem in a nutshell. He can’t take punishment at all, and he’s not going to last any length of time against GGG unless he moves and holds as much as possible. Jacobs needs to spoil for 12 rounds to try and tire GGG out.

If I’m Jacobs’ trainer, I’d have him studying Andre Ward’s fighting style that he used against Sergey Kovalev this month to learn how to hold and wrestle like Ward did the entire fight, because that’s honestly Jacobs’ best chance of beating Golovkin. Turn the fight a wrestling match, and don’t let Golovkin throw anything at all. Dare the referee to do his job by disqualifying you for excessive clinching, because I think that’s the only way Jacobs can win. Few referees control the excessive clinching rule any longer, so it’s quite possible for Jacobs to hold for three minutes of every round without being disqualified. Nowadays, referees only control some of low blows and occasionally rabbit punches. Even in that department, they do a pretty poor job by not consistently correcting them. If Jacobs can hold Golovkin all night, he might be able to tire him out and win the fight. If each round is decided by 10 punches landed due to the rounds being filled with clinching by Jacobs, he might win the fight. It’ll be ugly, but it’s better to win ugly than to lose by a 1st or 2nd round knockout by slugging with Golovkin.

It’s possible for Jacobs to wear Golovkin down the way Ward did with Kovalev by holding and wrestling, but Jacobs will need to make that’s his Plan-A strategy for the fight. If Jacobs tries to fight Golovkin like he did his last two opponents Quillin and Mora, this fight will end in the 1st or 2nd round with Jacobs being knocked out. Unlike Mora and Quillin, Golovkin will take Jacobs power shots, but unfortunately, he won’t be able to handle Golovkin’s retur