Golovkin vs. Jacobs expected in March 2017

By Dan Ambrose:Boxing News

Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) and his team have until March of 2017 to fight middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs), according to trainer Abel Sanchez. If the Jacobs fight doesn’t take place by March of next year, Golovkin will be moving on to other things.

Sanchez says they have other plans for Golovkin beyond March, and they’re not going to keep investing more time with the Jacobs fight. As it is, the Jacobs fight has taken the remainder of 2016.

By the time Golovkin and Jacobs fight each other in March 2017, Team Golovkin will have spent six months on the fight. That’s half a year for a fight that won’t bring in a lot of money due to it being shown on regular HBO Championship Boxing and not on pay-per-view.

Golovkin’s team wants him to fight three times in 2017. They want to fight Jacobs in the first quarter of the year, and then fight in the summer. Finally, they’re hoping to face Mexican star Saul “Canelo Alvarez in September of 2017 if Golden Boy Promotions is ready to make the fight.

Sanchez said this to Fighthype.com about the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight:

“We’re confident they’re going to negotiate. The date is sometime in March, the second week in March,” said Sanchez. “Tom [Loeffler] and Al [Haymon] are negotiating right now. Hopefully it gets done. It’s a mandatory for Jacobs, so he’s kind of in a position where he has to fight the fight. I don’t think Tom will let it go past March, because we have the other plans for the rest of the year. So hopefully it’s a good fight. There’s times when a fighter just prices himself out and it’s impossible to make a deal. But if it doesn’t happen in March, then it won’t happen, because we have other plans for the rest of the year. The WBA has already mandated the fight, so he has to fight or give up the belt. I don’t think he [Jacobs] will be afraid before he gets inside the ring. Once he gets in there with Golovkin and catches something from him, it’ll be a different story. I think his [Jacobs] confidence will be high, because he just got eight knockouts in a row. I think the guys doing well, but Golovkin’s on a different level. Golovkin is on a totally different level. We’re going to prepare like we always do. We’re going to take him very, very seriously, because he’s a very good fighter, but I feel Golovkin will be too much,” said Sanchez.

Sanchez expects Golovkin to be too much for Jacobs when the two of them get inside the ring in March. Sanchez may be right. Once Jacobs gets hit by Golokvin the first time, we could see him wilt in the same way he did in his loss to Dmitry Pirog. Jacobs had his moments early in the Pirog fight, but once he started getting hit, he went on the retreat and began to take punishment. Jacobs has good boxing skills and punching power, but he does not fight well when going backwards.

It was bad news for Jacobs once he could no longer stand his ground with Pirog, because he lost his only chance of winning the fight. If Jacobs wilts under the pressure from Golovkin, then he’s not going to last long in there. Golovkin will take him out fast. Jacobs can try and land a homerun shot like he did against Quillin, but if that fails o do the job, then he’s going to get taken apart quickly by Triple G in this fight. There won’t be much Jacobs will be able to do to stop Golovkin.

Golovkin and his promoter Tom Loeffler are going to need to think seriously about a backup plan in case the Jacobs fight still isn’t negotiated or taking place by March 2017. Golovkin’s team is going to need to decide whether it’s worth it or not to put more time into the Jacobs fight. They could get this whole thing over with if they would just the negotiations go to a purse bid, so that they could be done entirely with fight.

It would be better for them to do that then to get stuck eating up more time. It’s hard to know what Jacobs’ management is getting out of keeping their fighter stuck in negotiations with Golovkin. It’s not a big money fight. Jacobs would have made more money simply in agreeing to the negotiations with Golovkin quickly. They could have then fought in December, and then someone else in early 2017. Of course, if Jacobs’ management can’t get enough dates for him to fight. It makes sense then to drag out the negotiations with Golovkin for as long as possible to get the most money they can from the fight.

Jacobs has done well scoring eight straight knockouts Jacobs has turned his career around since losing to Dmitry Pirog by a 5th round knockout in 2010. However, Jacobs has fought only one really good opponent in the last six years in his 1st round knockout win over Peter Quillin last December.

The other guys that Jacobs has fought haven’t been dangerous fighters. He’s been beating guys like Sergio Mora, Caleb Truax, Jarrod Fletcher, Milton Nunez, Giovanni Lorenzo, Kennan Collins and Chris Fitzpatrick. Jacobs hasn’t really stepped it up other than the Quillin fight, which matched him against a fighter who has been facing weak opposition as well.