Hearn talks Demetrius Andrade facing GGG or Canelo vs. Jacobs winner

By Sean Jones

Boxingnews24.com

Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn has high hopes of his fighter WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade fighting Gennady Golovkin or the winner of the Saul Canelo Alvarez vs. Danny Jacobs fight, which will be taking place on May 4. Hearn sees Andrade (27-0, 17 KOs) as being in a good position to get one of those two fights against Golovkin, if he signs with DAZN and agrees to it, or the Canelo-Jacobs winner.

Hearn wants Andrade to face either the winner of Canelo-Jacobs or Golovkin next. If Hearn can’t get any of those guys to fight Andrade, then he’s talking about matching him against former world title challenger Maciej Sulecki (27-1, 11 KOs), as long as he wins his next match against the well respected journeyman Gabriel Rosado (24-11-1, 14 KOs) in their 10 round fight next month on March 15 at the Liacouras Center, in Philadelphia. This is one of Hearn’s cards. He was impressed with the way that Sulecki fought Jacobs last April in losing a 12 round unanimous decision in a fight that was much closer than the scores handed in by two of the judges that worked the fight, who scored it 116-111 and 117-110 for Jacobs. The third judge scored it 115-112. Boxing News 24 had Jacobs winning by two points. He barely won the fight, and didn’t look impressive in the least. The fight took place in Jacobs’ backyard at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The World Boxing Organization has already moved former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Golovkin (38-1-1, 34 KOs) into the #1 spot as the top contender for Andrade’s WBO belt. The sanctioning is expected to order the Andrade vs. Golovkin fight any day now. Hearn wonders whether Golovkin, 36, will take the fight with Andrade if/when the WBO does make the move to order the fight. Hearn says he would love that fight. He thinks Golovkin has perhaps two to three years left in his career before he’s finished as a fighter. Hearn points out that GGG hasn’t had that many hard fights during his 13-year pro career. He considers Golovkin’s recent loss to Canelo Alvarez last September as one of his hard fights in which he took a lot of punishment. Canelo took a lot of punishing blows as well, but he’s younger at 28, and has more time left on the clock.

“We’re talking to him [Golovkin], and I guess he’s talking to everybody, and I’m sure he’ll make a decision soon,” Hearn said about DAZN wanting to sign former middleweight champion Golovkin. “I think he’s still a great fighter. I think he’s got a couple of years in him, three years. He hasn’t really had that many tough fights. The Canelo fight was a tough fight,”Hearn said.

Golovkin beat Hearn’s fighter Danny Jacobs in 2017. Hearn feels that Jacobs deserved the victory. Jacobs was knocked down in the fourth by GGG, and he spent vast portions of the fight staying on the move, eating jabs, and not standing his ground to try and mix it up.

It’s thought that the two-fight deal that DAZN is rumored to be offering GGG involves him needing to face Andrade, 30, in the first fight of the deal, and then Canelo Alvarez in the second fight. If the rumored deal is true, then it would put Golovkin in a tough fight where he would need to presumably beat the slick southpaw Andrade in order to get the trilogy fight with Canelo. There would be risk involved for Golovkin to have to fight a southpaw that moves a lot, and isn’t going to be stationary for him to land his shots. It would potentially be a similar type of fight as Golovkin’s match against Danny Jacobs in 2017. Jacobs used a lot of movement in the first six rounds to avoid Golovkin. In the second half of the fight, Jacobs went on the attack at times, and was able to win five of the last six rounds on the judges’ scorecards. Jacobs appeared to win 2 to 3 of the last 6 rounds on this writer’s scorecard. The fight took place in New York, so it was’t surprising that Jacobs, a New Yorker, was able to win so many of the rounds in the second half of the contest. Andrade would likely move just as much if no more than Jacobs against Golovkin, and the fight could turn into a difficult to score match. With Andrade being from the East Coast, Golovkin would likely need to face him in that part of the U.S, and that would make it hard potentially to win a decision as the visiting fighter. What Golovkin doesn’t need is another controversial decision following his two fights with Canelo Alvarez. If Golovkin does decide on taking the fight with Andrade, the best place for it would be in Southern California rather than the East Coast.

“I think he’s [Demetrius Andrade] is in a good position,” Hearn said of Andrade in the position to get either a fight against GGG or the winner of the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight. “I’d like to see him fight the winner of Danny Jacobs vs. Canelo for the undisputed championship. It looks like the WBO will make that fight [Andrade vs. Golovkin], but whether the fight happens or not [is unknown]. Yeah, I think that [Golovkin] might be mandatory, so we’ll see what happens,” Hearn said about the World Boxing Organization about to make Golovkin the mandatory challenger to WBO middleweight champion Andrade.

Hearn clearly wants Andrade to get the winner of the Canelo vs. Jacobs fight, and he’ll likely have him sit idle until the smoke clears from that fight unless the WBO orders the Andrade vs. Golovkin fight. That’s what the WBO is expected to do. If that fight gets ordered, it’ll come down to Golovkin whether it happens or not. He would need to likely sign with DAZN first, and then from there schedule the match against the 6’1″ Andrade. It’s a good fight as long as Golovkin is ready to cut off the ring all night, and deal with the counter punching style of Andrade. In Andrade’s last fight against Artur Akavov, he looked shaky each time he was hit solidly. Andrade eventually knocked Akavov out in the 12th round in a highly questionable stoppage, but it wasn’t a dominating performance by him. What the fight showed is Andrade is still the same guy that barely beat Jack Culcay by a 12 round split decision in March 2017. There’s no improvement in Andrade’s game. He still struggles when pressured, and he seems to freeze for brief moment when he takes hard head shots. Akavov, who isn’t a big puncher, stunned Andrade on a couple of occasions with his shots. If Akavov had any kind of power, he likely would have knocked Andrade out. It’s surprising that Billy Joe Saunders didn’t take the fight with Andrade, because he would have an excellent chance of beating him if he took that fight.

“Canelo’s fights are in May and September,” Hearn said. “He’s got to beat Danny Jacobs first. I’m a big believer Danny Jacobs wins that fight.”

Jacobs does not look like he’s capable of beating Canelo Alvarez by a knockout, and that’s probably what he’s going to need to be able to do if he wants to to have his hand raised on May 4. Canelo vs. Jacobs is taking place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is the same venue where Canelo was involved in two controversial decision fights against Golovkin. Jacobs may need to either dominate to the point where there’s simply chance of him losing a decision or knocking him out, which given Alvarez’s recent history in fighting at the T-Mobile, would be advisable. Being the visiting fighter is going to put Jacobs at a tremendous disadvantage against Canelo. As long as he knows what he needs to do for him to win, he can come into the fight with the right game plan to give himself the best chance of winning. Jacobs should have his foot firmly planted on the accelerator the moment the fight starts if he wants to have any chance of beating Canelo.

“Billy Joe Saunders was the one that wanted it [fight with Demetrius Andrade for WBO middleweight title], but he decided not to take the fight with Andrade,” Hearn said. “I was disappointed. [Maciej] Sulecki is fighting [Gabriel] Rosado on our Philly show on March 15th. If he wins that fight, I think Sulecki is up there as a world championship contender. He had a great fight with Jacobs,” Hearn said.