By Keith Idec
When a reporter informed Keith Connolly on Friday that he scored Gennady Golovkin a 115-112 winner over Daniel Jacobs, Connolly respectfully urged him to watch the fight again and get back to him.
Connolly, Jacobs’ manager, has watched the fight three times in its entirety since Saturday night. He still can’t come up with a way Golovkin won seven of the 12 rounds in their highly competitive middleweight title fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.
One thing is certain – nearly a week after Jacobs gave Golovkin the toughest fight of his 10-year career, the great debate about who won continues.
“I had Danny winning Rounds 1 and 2,” Connolly told BoxingScene.com. “Then I had him losing a close third and I obviously had him losing four and five. So after five rounds, I had Danny down by two points. And then I had him winning 6, 7, 8. I had him losing 9. And then I had him winning 10, 11, 12.
“Certain people thought Golovkin won the 12th. A lot of people thought Danny won the 12th. I had Golovkin winning the first 45 seconds [of the 12th]. After that, I felt like Danny took over the 12th round. The 12th round was hard to judge. I admit that. But even if I gave the 12th round to Golovkin, I had it 7-5 [for Jacobs]. I had it 8-4, but even if you give Golovkin that 12th round, I still had it 7-5. A lot of people thought Danny won. A lot of people. But it was a great fight.”
All three judges – Max DeLuca (114-113), Don Trella (115-112) and Steve Weisfeld (115-112) – scored the fight for Kazakhstan’s Golovkin (37-0, 33 KOs).
According to unofficial CompuBox statistics, Golovkin landed 231-of-615 overall punches, 56 more than Jacobs (175-of-541). CompuBox credited Brooklyn’s Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) with landing more power punches (144-of-371 to 126-of-259) and indicated Golovkin connected with many more jabs (105-of-356 to 31-of-170).
HBO will replay the Golovkin-Jacobs fight Saturday night at 10 p.m. ET as part of a doubleheader that’ll also include a replay of Srisaket Sor Rungvisai’s majority-decision upset of Roman “Chocolatito” Gonzalez in their WBC world super flyweight title fight on the Golovkin-Jacobs undercard.
“Most people that I’ve talked to think Danny won,” Connolly said. “Certain people have used the word robbed. I don’t know if it would go as far as a robbery, but I thought it was a clear-cut win for Danny. You know how everybody has those friends where they pretend they’re your friend, but they’re really a hater – they don’t want you to do well – even a couple of those people told me they thought Danny won.
“And when those people told me they thought Danny won, I really thought we had it. But I thought it was a great night. It was an amazing fight for a fight at that level. And I thought Danny, like I had been saying through the whole promotion, he showed them something they weren’t expecting, where he kind of fought toe-to-toe with Golovkin. Not only did he survive Golovkin, I thought there were points where he caught him on the inside with the body work he did.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
