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90% competition, 10% age. I'd say his competition actually made him a better fighter, you can't undervalue experience.
The first time ggg stepped up he was 29 years old against a faded Kassim Ouma and looked terrible. That fight really disproves the theory that he was at his best when he was younger.
ggg is closer to his peak now than he was when he was 29 and a lot of it actually has to do with stepping up in competition.
His fight against Jacobs really prepped him well for a tough bout against Canelo. The Brook, Wade, Lemieux etc. fights weren't doing anything but keep him fresh.
In the end he was a good but not great fighter.Comment
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This is **** logic.
By this logic, Gabriel Rosado and Vanes would have looked much better against Golovkin.
Hint: they got completely destroyed. If you didn't know it, both guys beat Kassim Ouma before he faced Golovkin.
Sometimes fighters go through bad camps. Sometimes they get sick before fights. Sometimes an underdog opponent goes through the best training camp of their life, has the right mentality, and so forth. We've seen other great fighters struggle with so-called "lesser" fighters, even at their peak. Mike Tyson struggled against James Tillis and lost to Douglas. Roberto Duran lost to Kirkland Laing. Hasim Rahman and Lewis. Etc.
Either way, claiming that disproves the "age" theory is absolute nonsense.Last edited by UNBIASED BOXING; 10-05-2018, 11:23 AM.Comment
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Historically most great fighters were shadows of their best selves around 33, 34, 35. Sure there are those that were exceptions to the rule. Sure there are those that were done before 30. Ray Mancini never won a fight past the age of 22 iirc. But the rule says typically things start going downhill right around the time GGG started getting big fights finally.
So idk that anyone can really say with much accuracy if its age or competition or some combo of both or a lil more of this one or that one. My only assumption based on historical elite level boxers is that age had some impact on GGG looking "more human" in recent years. Its one of the great crimes of this era of boxing that the best aren't fighting the best more often. And GGG's full potential as a boxer was ultimately never discovered because of how boxing works. Thats happened to so many guys in this era or past eras when other reasons besides money were used to not give talented fighters their shot at reaching their pinnacle in the sport.Comment
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ggg didn't fight Rosado until 2 years after fighting Ouma, he was a much better fighter by then. Everybody knows Vanes was pretty much shot, his last 2 fights were a clear UD loss to Lara, a close decision to Smith, and he was coming off a 2 year layoff to jump a division up. Oh and he hired Rousey's boxing trainer too lol
ggg hired Sanchez around that Ouma fight and he transformed him into the fighter you see today. Sanchez made ggg.Comment
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A mixture of both. It's unfortunate that by the time he was able to get the top fighters in his division in the ring with him he was in his mid-thirties. Let's not forget he wanted to fight Sturm for the full-fledged WBA title early in his career, but Sturm paid off the WBA to avoid that fight.
Against Jacobs, who is a top middleweight, Golovkin was a bit too hesitant in some rounds and gave them away by allowing Jacobs to get off with combinations which - although were not landing effectively (Golovkin has a better defense than he is given credit for) - were keeping him occupied on defence and essentially giving away those rounds to Jacobs on work-rate alone, which made the fight close, though Golovkin came out the deserved winner.
The rematch with Canelo was the only time I truly felt he looked his age and to be slowing down, and it took a great fighter in his youth and prime to bring that out. Even so, Golovkin still boxed very well and did enough to win the fight, though it was close. The first fight, however, was not close and was a total robbery.
What's funny to me is that when Golovkin was dominating lesser competition and knocking everyone out, people had him rated at or near the very top of the pound-for-pound list. Then he goes and beats Jacobs and Canelo - two of the best fighters in the division and a significant step up from his previous competition - and suddenly, because he didn't score KOs in these fights or win them as dominantly, people actually dropped him lower in the pound-for-pound list. That simply doesn't make sense to me. If anything, those wins, despite being more competitive than his earlier fights, should have bolstered his position in the ratings, not had the opposite effect.
It essentially encourages the notion that beating lesser competition in dominant fashion is more important than beating top competition in competitive fights. You could use Terence Crawford as a perfect example of this. He's a very good boxer who has looked dominant against B and C level opposition (as Golovkin did), so much so that some people have him rated as pound-for-pound number one. So that being the case and considering how Golovkin slid down in people's estimation as he defeated better competition - albeit in closer, more competitive fights - where is the incentive for a guy like Crawford to truly challenge himself against a top guy in his division like Spence or Thurman (when/if he comes back)?
These days, instead of the best fighting the best to prove WHO is truly the best, all we get are the top fighters competing against one another indirectly by trying to beat lesser opponents in more impressive fashion than their rivals. Instead of getting rank #1 vs. rank #2, they each fight lower ranked guys and then we as fans have to decide who we think is better simply by who had the more impressive performance. It's silly.
In boxing today, we have the fighters - we just don't have the fights.Comment
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