By Lyle Fitzsimmons - Let’s say you’re Miguel Cotto.
You’re 34 years old. You’ve earned title belts in every weight class from 140 to 160 pounds.
And you’re such a fixture on Puerto Rican Day parade weekend in New York City that 20,000 people would gladly drop a couple hundred bucks to watch you go a few rounds with Bill de Blasio.
So why, when the Hall of Fame is a virtual certainty five years after your swan song, would you ever consider tangling with a middleweight wrecking machine like Gennady Golovkin?
Here’s the short answer: You wouldn’t (and you shouldn’t).
And absolutely nothing you saw Saturday afternoon on HBO ought to change your mind.
As Jim Lampley, Roy Jones Jr. and Max Kellerman presciently pointed out from their ringside seats in Monaco – it was going to take an undeniable sign of weakness from Golovkin against Martin Murray to make any high-profile commodity think twice about stepping in with a guy who’s not heard a final bell since 2008 and has ground an increasingly higher grade of middleweight meat into bloody chuck.
Didn’t happen.
Though the Kazakh saw a scantily-clad lass slink past his corner bearing a No. 11 ring card for the very first time, the fact that a preposterously gutty – but clearly outgunned – Murray got his rescue later rather than earlier one does nothing to dampen the momentum with which Golovkin arrived. [Click Here To Read More]
You’re 34 years old. You’ve earned title belts in every weight class from 140 to 160 pounds.
And you’re such a fixture on Puerto Rican Day parade weekend in New York City that 20,000 people would gladly drop a couple hundred bucks to watch you go a few rounds with Bill de Blasio.
So why, when the Hall of Fame is a virtual certainty five years after your swan song, would you ever consider tangling with a middleweight wrecking machine like Gennady Golovkin?
Here’s the short answer: You wouldn’t (and you shouldn’t).
And absolutely nothing you saw Saturday afternoon on HBO ought to change your mind.
As Jim Lampley, Roy Jones Jr. and Max Kellerman presciently pointed out from their ringside seats in Monaco – it was going to take an undeniable sign of weakness from Golovkin against Martin Murray to make any high-profile commodity think twice about stepping in with a guy who’s not heard a final bell since 2008 and has ground an increasingly higher grade of middleweight meat into bloody chuck.
Didn’t happen.
Though the Kazakh saw a scantily-clad lass slink past his corner bearing a No. 11 ring card for the very first time, the fact that a preposterously gutty – but clearly outgunned – Murray got his rescue later rather than earlier one does nothing to dampen the momentum with which Golovkin arrived. [Click Here To Read More]
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