by David P. Greisman
Daniel Geale has been impressed with what Gennady Golovkin has done. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t think he can beat “GGG” when Geale challenges the middleweight titleholder on July 26 at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
And so while Geale noted that Golovkin “didn’t show any respect whatsoever for Matthew Macklin” when he knocked Macklin out in three with a body shot last year, he also feels that Macklin “didn’t show a lot of a confidence in that fight” and didn’t think he was going to win.
“When you’ve got somebody that isn’t scared of you, that wants to fight, that changes everything,” Geale told BoxingScene.com last month before breaking down what he felt were Golovkin’s strengths and weaknesses.
“He has plenty of strengths. The guy’s got good feet, good hands, great hand-eye coordination, but he does drop his guard a little bit as well,” Geale said. “He’s there to be hit. He does rely on that power. He knows that he hurts people, and he doesn’t worry about his defense probably as much. And another weakness as well, I guess he hasn’t been in hard 12-round fights. He hasn’t been taken into that water. There’s plenty there for me to work with.”
Golovkin’s longest fight was a 10-round stoppage over Kassim Ouma in 2011. Besides that, he’s gone eight rounds a total of five times and gone seven rounds twice. He is 29-0 with 26 KOs.
Geale is 30-2 with 16 KOs and has been in 13 fights that went the 12-round distance, including last year’s close, competitive split decision loss to Darren Barker.
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