By Steve Kim, photo by Ed Mulholland

As the fight between IBF, IBO, WBA, WBC unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) and mandatory challenger Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) was being negotiated at the end of 2016, there were some skeptics who wondered if this could actually come to fruition.

But Abel Sanchez, who trains Golovkin, didn't have much doubt.

"Not at all," he stated. "I'm not surprised because the financial rewards for this fight for Danny are the biggest, the highest pay that he will ever see. But Danny has gone through a bit of trouble in his life with the cancer and he's had some setbacks. So I think that he's really looking forward to putting himself on the line."

It's believed that Jacobs will be receiving a career-high payday for this assignment, well above $2 million. Jacobs is riding a twelve fight win streak all by knockout, since suffering his first and only career defeat to Dmitry Pirog in 2010.

As for how this fight will play out, Sanchez states - "I think Danny will put up a great fight till the middle of the fight and somewhere in the second part of the fight, between the seventh and ninth, Gennady's too strong and will have been touching him during those rounds and the corner will stop it like they did with (Curtis) Stevens or Danny will just succumb to a good shot."

The HBO Pay-Per-View fight takes place this coming Saturday night, at New York's Madison Square Garden.

Golovkin was last in action back in September, when he traveled over to the O2 Arena in London to score a fifth round stoppage victory over IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook. Jacobs also fought in September, when he battered and stopped former world champion Sergio Mora in a rematch from Reading, PA. 

Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.