The 32 year-old was in devastating form at Madison Square Garden at the weekend against a fighter I firmly believed would give ‘GGG’ problems he had never faced in the ring previously. I expected Geale to push Golovkin at least until the later rounds, but how wrong was I when the hard-hitting Kazakh made his statement in just under nine minutes.
Golovkin had a stunned Geale down in the second round, before completing the job in the third, and in my opinion, is now out on his own as the world’s premiere 160lber. Golovkin made a tenth straight defence of his WBA title and ninth of his IBO version, and given the fact that WBC champion Miguel Cotto is predominantly at light-middleweight, that means it would be hard to make a case against Golovkin being top of the pile at 11 stone 6.
I fear his opponent Geale, 33, may never be the same fighter after going down to his first career stoppage, with the Aussie now having lost two of his last three contests and in need of a prolonged rebuilding job before a return to world class.
K2 and HBO’s Golovkin steam train continues to shudder on though and there will be have to be big calls to make a massive unification with Puerto Rican legend Cotto at some point down the line if ‘Junito’ decides to stay at the higher weight.
For my money, it may well be another Australian opposing Golovkin next as Sam Soliman has been holding out on negotiating with Martin Murray, Matthew Macklin or Peter Quillin to see if interest will come from K2, which could well be the case for a unification later this year.
If Golovkin can pick up yet another championship, a clash with Cotto could be massive for the late spring/early summer of 2015, and may well have four belts on the line if both sides agree to get in on.
Follow on Twitter @PhilDJay for tweets of upcoming news on WBN
