By Keith Idec
Daniel Geale’s promoter is sure the worst night of Geale’s career isn’t a real reflection of the former middleweight champion from Australia.
Gary Shaw isn’t as sure, though, that Miguel Cotto and his handlers realize that Geale is a far different fighter from the one Gennady Golovkin knocked out in the third round of their middleweight title fight 10 months ago at Madison Square Garden. Shaw, whose Totowa, N.J.-based company promotes Geale, believes Golovkin’s knockout win was one of the main reasons Puerto Rico’s Cotto (39-4, 32 KOs) accepted his June 6 fight against Geale at Barclays Center in Brooklyn (HBO; 10:30 p.m. ET/7:30 p.m. PT).
“They made a mistake if they looked at the Triple-G fight and feel that’s the Daniel Geale that’ll be in the ring on June 6th,” Shaw said Thursday on a conference call. “That is not the Daniel Geale. And although I respect Miguel Cotto as a person and like him as a friend – he’s for sure a Hall-of-Famer. But he made a mistake, in my opinion. This is more like the Trout fight [for Cotto] than the Triple-G fight [for Geale].
“So we’ll see on June 6th which Daniel Geale comes into the ring and which Miguel Cotto comes into the ring. But I think this is the first true middleweight that Miguel Cotto has ever fought. Daniel will come in hydrated and will be more than 160 pounds on Saturday, June 6th.”
The 34-year-old Geale (31-3, 16 KOs) had lost only a pair of split decisions to England’s Darren Barker (26-2, 16 KOs) and Australia’s Anthony Mundine (47-6, 27 KOs) before Golovkin knocked him down twice on his way to an easy victory July 26 at The Garden.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.