By Keith Idec, photo by Tom Hogan/Hoganphotos
NEW YORK – Daniel Jacobs and his handlers had a weight plan in place prior to his fight Saturday night against Gennady Golovkin.
They weren’t about to disrupt that blueprint by participating in the IBF’s second-day weigh-in Saturday morning. That essentially was Jacobs’ explanation for skipping a second-day weigh-in that would’ve restricted how much weight he could gain following the official weigh-in Friday morning for their middleweight title fight.
The IBF’s second-day weigh-ins prohibit boxers from adding more than 10 pounds over their division’s limit between the official weigh-in and the morning of a fight. In this case, Golovkin and Jacobs couldn’t weigh more than 170 pounds on Saturday morning if they wanted to fight for the IBF title.
Golovkin, who weighed in at 159.6 pounds Friday, was 169.8 pounds Saturday morning. He retained his IBF title even before the bout began because Jacobs, who weighed 159.8 pounds Friday, missed the second-day weigh-in.
Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs) weighed 170 pounds on HBO’s unofficial scale Saturday night. Brooklyn’s Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) wouldn’t allow HBO to weigh him Saturday night, but said following his unanimous-decision defeat to Golovkin that he was “probably about 175” pounds when their 12-round battle began at Madison Square Garden.
Golovkin, who successfully defended his WBA, WBC and IBO titles by beating Jacobs, never considered skipping the IBF’s second-day weigh-in.
“It’s his problem,” Golovkin said. “I respect my sport. I respect boxing. This IBF [situation], it’s his problem, not mine. It doesn’t matter to me.”
The 34-year-old Golovkin added, though, that he wasn’t angry at Jacobs for missing the second-day weigh-in. The 6-feet Jacobs acknowledged that he missed it because he wanted to make sure he had a significant size advantage of the 5-feet-10 Golovkin.
“It wasn’t really me being disrespectful,” Jacobs said of skipping the second-day weigh-in. “It’s my prerogative to wanna get up at 6, 7 o’clock in the morning to do a weigh-in, and be restricted to 170 pounds. So it was mainly me just wanting to stay hydrated and not have to focus on the little things, even though I respect this boxing game. I respect all [sanctioning bodies] and their rulings.
“But for me, I really wanted to focus on this fight. And we had a game plan. We wanted to make sure we used our size and we had the best possible nutrition that we can. And waking up early, for me, was just a hard thing to do. Not because we were overweight, but I didn’t wanna have an issue whatsoever.”
The 30-year-old Jacobs overcame a fourth-round knockdown Saturday night to give Golovkin the most challenging fight of his 10-year pro career. Jacobs also halted Golovkin’s 23-fight knockout streak, which began in November 2008.
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
