Fight fans across the country finally got their first look at Gennady Golovkin on Saturday night, as the HBO televised event was aired from the Turning Stone Casino in New York. Golovkin didn’t disappoint, either, as he dominated a game but overmatched Grzegorz Proksa en route to a 5th round TKO win.
Golovkin has had a lot of fans for a long time, but he hasn’t been seen by the public at large. Proksa came in as a decent opponent, but one who was expected to lose, after the original opponent, Dmitriy Pirog, pulled out of the bout.
Things got started off with a bang in the 1st Round, with Golovkin scoring a knockdown toward the end of the session. He’s speedy, all of his shots have power, and he has crisp skills, and smooth, diverse offensive attack.
Golovkin continued to mount his attack over the next few rounds. Proksa looked for openings here and there, but was mainly kept on the defensive, and was absorbing punishment to the body and head.
The pattern continued in the 4th, as Golovkin hurt him to the body, and then absolutely nailed him with a combination upstairs, sending him careening to the canvas again. At this point it just seemed to be a matter of time, as Proksa barely made it out of the round.
In the fifth, Golovkin pummeled him with a few monster right hands. Proksa beat the count, but the referee wisely halted the action. Golovkin improves to 24-0 with 21 knockouts.
Hopefully we see Golovkin in there with the winner of the Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs. Sergio Martinez fight next, as that would be another excellent match.
In the first fight of the evening, Sergiy Dzinziruk fought the ridiculously overweight Jonathan Gonzalez in a bout which was scored as a draw. Gonzalez weighed in at 163 lbs for a fight contracted for the junior middleweight division. That’s 9 pounds overweight, making the resulting bout a fraud.
I’m not going to spend much time dissecting what happened in the ring, because it’s fight which never should have happened.
And quite frankly, Gonzalez shouldn’t even sniff a televised fight for years. It’s disgraceful. What would have been worse, he comes in crazily overweight, and scores a knockout as a result, or that he did come in crazily overweight, and he couldn’t even get a clean win?
