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Golovkin-Monroe: Swarmer vs. Boxer, Who Has The Advantage?

The upcoming middleweight title bout between WBA/IBO champ Gennady Golovkin 32-0 (29) and southpaw Willie Monroe Jr. 19-1 (6) represents the classic boxer (Monroe) versus swarmer (Gokovkin) clash.
It’s also one of the match ups in which many cook-book boxing analyst will come out from under the woodwork to inject their perfect world strategy and fight plans. You know the ones who will either write an article or post a YouTube video which brilliantly, so they think, deduces how Golovkin has to force Monroe to the ropes and into the corners to be successful. Then in the next article/video they’ll suggest how in order for Monroe to have a chance to win, he’ll have to stay off the ropes and keep Golovkin at center ring. The words will flow and the video, if they make one, will incorrectly make you think they’re the wizard of boxing when it comes to breaking down a fight from an X’s and O’s vantage point.
The Golovkin-Monroe fight is a classic example in which pre-fight strategies won’t mean a thing if neither fighter, especially Monroe, doesn’t possess the needed physicality to implement and execute the winning battle plan. Monroe is a good boxer with quick hands who moves and utilizes the entire ring. The ideal fight for him if things are to go his way see him keeping Golovkin at the end of his punches as he’s scoring from outside and center ring without having to fight with his back against the ropes or in a corner.
Conversely, backing Monroe to the ropes and cornering him is Golovkin’s sole intention. Gennady wants to fight up close and on the inside. He wants Monroe to have to fight him off of him on the inside where Monroe’s jab and movement are nullified, and the fight becomes a battle of hooks and uppercuts. Which usually results with the fighter who owns the bigger guns, Golovkin, winning.
When a “boxer” like Monroe faces a “swarmer” like Golovkin, in order for the boxer to be effective he must possess enough power to where he keeps the swarmer honest so he can’t just walk him down as if he’s handcuffed. Nothing breaks me up more than when I’ve heard it said over the years that Muhammad Ali and Larry Holmes couldn’t punch because they didn’t score picturesque knockouts like George Foreman and Earnie Shavers often did. Today the same asinine thing is said about Floyd Mayweather, who many believe is the best pound-for-pound fighter in boxing. My retort to that is, if Ali and Holmes couldn’t bust a grape, why didn’t George and Earnie go after them as if they had no arms and punch them all over the ring? Why didn’t Cotto or Maidana go after Mayweather as if he were handcuffed? If you don’t know, and you might not, I’ll tell you why they didn’t; because Muhammad, Larry and Floyd hit plenty hard enough to the point that their powerful and aggressive opponents couldn’t attack them blindly without getting hurt themselves.
Mark my words, Monroe might be the smoothest and slickest fighter in boxing, but if he doesn’t punch hard enough to give Golovkin the slightest bit of concern, then what? What’s to stop Golovkin from just walking him down to the point to where there’s nowhere for him to go – then blasting him with his finishing shots? And from what we’ve seen Gennady doesn’t have to land punches in bunches to hurt his opponents.
I saw that Monroe said on the Boxing Channel that his bout with Golovkin, “Will be a physical chess match.” Oh how wrong he is! Golovkin isn’t going to even attempt to out-think Monroe, no sir. He’s going to feel what he has in the first round and gauge to himself if there’s anything coming back at him that he needs to be leery of. And if there’s not, he’ll raise the rent and force Monroe to fight, and that’s when we’ll find out if Willie has the other requisite tool needed to beat Golovkin, and that’s a good chin. Yes, when a “boxer” fights an attacker, the boxer needs enough punch to impede the swarmers aggression, if only for a second…..and he also needs a chin to keep him upright when the big punching attacker lands on him.
Just because a fighter is a “boxer,” it doesn’t mean he can’t punch (although sometimes that is the case). It just means he’s not a life-taker. If Monroe is to beat or even compete with Golovkin, he needs enough punch so Gennady doesn’t throw caution to the wind and he needs a strong chin for when GGG lands a few good ones, because he will. And a lot of that is because some swarmers are too strong to box, and I’m betting Golovkin is one of them. When a good boxer meets a good swarmer, which isn’t often because there’s a dearth of outstanding swarmers fighting in 2015, the X’s and O’s go out the window if the “boxer” doesn’t possess enough punch to give the swarmer/fighter something to think about. Which is something the YouTube video boxing gurus never take into account because they usually don’t know. Fights are not decided on paper or mapped out by an instructional video. They take place at the speed of live where each fighters’ physicality dictates who’s going to execute the X’s and O’s.
I have no doubt that Willie Monroe Jr. knows what he needs to do and how to fight Gennady Golovkin. But if he doesn’t possess the requisite tools mentioned above to apply what he knows, Gennady will find that out in not too much time, and then he’ll start executing his X’s that will stop Monroe’s O’s!
Frank Lotierzo can be contacted at GlovedFist@Gmail.com
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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.
One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.
Take your pick.
The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.
Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.
Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.
If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.
He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.
During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.
Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.
Fundora
Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.
Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.
Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.
Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.
Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?
When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.
This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.
Commerce Casino
Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.
UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.
Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.
It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.
Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?
That’s a question for another day.
Fights to Watch
Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).
Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).
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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.
Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.
Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)
Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.
The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).
Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”
A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.
Other winners:
Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon
Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney
Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire
Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix
The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.
The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.
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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.
He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.
Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.
“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.
“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)
Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.
During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”
He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.
He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.
On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.
Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.
If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.
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