Gennady Golovkin and Roman Gonzalez: Pound-For-Pound Showcase

Published

10 years ago

October 21, 2015

On October 17, a sellout crowd of 20,548 filled Madison Square Garden for a fight card featuring Gennady Golovkin vs. David Lemieux and Roman Gonzalez vs. Brian Viloria. These were fight fans; not high-rollers who’d been comped to get them into a casino. They arrived early and stayed late.

Golovkin (who’s the consensus choice for #1 middleweight in the world) and Gonzalez (who reigns supreme in the 112-pound flyweight division) are technically sound ring predators. Each man dominates opponents with hard precision punching and a pressure assault. With Floyd Mayweather’s retirement, they rank first and second on wide range of pound-for-pound lists. Lemieux and Viloria (15-to-1 betting underdogs) were brought in as building blocks for the stardom of their presumed conquerors.

Gonzalez entered the ring with 43 wins, 0 losses, and 37 knockouts. He’s unknown to most sports fans. But in recent months, there has been a buzz about him in boxing circles.

Roman grew up in poverty on the outskirts on Managua and is Alexis Arguello’s successor as “The Pride of Nicaragua.”

“I used to fight in the neighborhood and in the streets,” Gonzalez told Diego Morilla of RingTV.com. “I was lucky to meet Alexis Arguello when he opened a gym in San Judas. My father’s fighting name was ‘Chocolate’. He used to fight in his younger years and traveled to Cuba a lot. When we went to the gym for the first time to see Alexis Arguello, there were many kids around. Alexis said, ‘So you’re Chocolate’s son? Then you must be ‘Chocolatito.’ It stuck after that. When he realized I had some talent, Alexis placed a lot of attention on me. He took me under his wing during my amateur career.”

Gonzalez compiled a reported 88-and-0 amateur record and turned pro in 2005. Now 28 years old, he’s 5-feet-3-inches tall. Several times a year, he weighs the flyweight maximum of 112 pounds (about the same as a thoroughbred horse jockey). He has a high-pitched voice and, in street clothes, would blend unnoticed into a crowd.

References to God are sprinkled throughout Gonzalez’s conversation. “It is a great pride to represent my country,” he says. “I am the only champion that Nicaragua has right now, and that’s my biggest motivation to continue training more and more. Hearing my name announced away from my country is an extra motivation. When I hear people say ‘Chocolatito’ in the streets, I feel that everyone in Nicaragua is watching my fights and sending their blessings.”

This is the first time in a long time that boxing fans have paid much attention to the flyweight division. Viloria (36-and-4 with 22 KOs) said all the right things leading up to the fight. “Roman has his accolades for a reason,” Brian noted. “But I’m relaxed. I’m confident. I know I’m ready.”

If one was looking for a peg that Viloria could hang his hopes on, it lay in the fact that, at a media sitdown two days before the fight, Gonzalez was chewing gum and spitting periodically into a nearby trash can; a sure sign that a fighter is struggling to make weight. The following afternoon, that peg was whittled down considerably when Roman weighed in at 111.4 pounds.

Fighting Gonzalez is like fighting a tornado. But in the ring, there’s no storm cellar for sanctuary. Viloria started aggressively, getting off first and winning round one on all three judges’ scorecards. He also earned the nod from two judges in the second stanza. But he wasn’t landing much of consequence, and one had the feeling that it was just a matter of time before the tables turned.

Gonzalez is a relentless non-stop punching machine, who throws three and four-punch combinations to the head and body with pinpoint accuracy. They’re sharp, punishing blows. In round three, a chopping right hand put Viloria on the canvas. Brian fought back bravely, but his cause was hopeless. By round six, his punches had lost their sting and the issue was how Gonzalez would end it, not if. Referee Benjy Esteves stopped the beating at the 2:53 mark of round nine. Gonzalez outlanded Viloria by a 335-to-186 margin, including a 315-to-161 advantage in power punches.

Sitting with a handful of reporters before the final pre-fight press conference, Gonzalez had talked about how Alexis Arguello taught him to throw punches in combination. Roman also recounted a conversation he had with his mentor about Arguello’s first fight against Aaron Pryor.

Arguello told Gonzalez, ‘I hit Pryor with my best righthand. With that hand, I knocked everybody down. And nothing happened. At that moment, I looked to the sky and said, ‘Ay, mamita!’”

When Viloria was being pummeled around the ring, he could have been forgiven for saying, “Ay, mamita!”

Gonzalez-Viloria was followed by Golovkin-Lemieux.

Golovkin had compiled a 33-and-0 record with 30 KOs, including knockout victories in his most recent twenty fights. He has never been on the canvas as an amateur or pro.

Outside the ring, Gennady has a gentle demeanor that masks how brutally he practices his trade. During fight week, he appears as relaxed as a man who’s readying to play an important tennis match at his country club on Saturday night. In the ring, he’s methodical and focused. He has mastered the art of controlling the distance between himself and his opponent. The opponent is always in danger.

“My plan is my plan,” Gennady said after beating Martin Murray earlier this year. “It doesn’t matter what he is doing. Step by step. Box. Then finish it.”

Light-heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev, who has sparred with Golovkin, told Ryan Burton of BoxingScene.com, “When we had the same training camp, we sparred a lot of times. His punches are not heavy but make you feel pain. Heavy is like a ‘boom’. His punches are more sharp, even more than heavy. He is a very hard puncher.”

And Fredde Roach, who trains Manny Pacquiao and Miguel Cotto, opined, “Golovkin is a great fighter. He’s strong. He has good fundamentals. He cuts the ring off well. I’ve watched his ring generalship. It’s effing great. Ring generalship is a lost art, but Golovkin has it. Ninety-five percent of the time, he’s in the right position. If you do that, you win fights. He’s heavy-handed. He’s a nice kid. I’m a big fan.”

Any doubts that people might have regarding Golovkin’s ring prowess are based on fights he hasn’t had. To wit, the lack of elite opponents on his ring record. By contrast, Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) was shadowed by two abysmal past performances.

There was a time when Lemieux was hailed as the future of Canadian boxing. Then, in 2011, he wilted against journeyman Marco Antonio Rubio and was stopped in the seventh round. In his next outing, he was brought back soft and lost again, this time by decision to Joachim Alcine (who has won only three of eleven fights since December 6, 2009).

The selling point for Golovkin-Lemieux was David’s “power”. Lemieux had won nine fights in a row after losing to Alcine, including a decision victory over Hassan N’Dam to capture an alphabet-soup championship belt. David was said to have “a puncher’s chance.” Indeed, the promotion kept likening Golovkin-Lemieux to Marvin Hagler versus Thomas Hearns.

But Hagler-Hearns was a toss-up fight. And as Jimmy Tobin wrote, “Lemieux wields his power with the nuance of child learning to use a spoon. Golovkin may not be the fighter of his mystique. But he would have to fall impossibly short of it to lose to Lemieux.”

An honest pre-fight appraisal of Golovkin-Lemieux was, “It will be entertaining for as long as it lasts.”

“Every boxer has power,” Golovkin warned. “The question is, ‘How much?’ I know my job. I think the knockout streak is not finished yet.”

When the fight began, Lemieux fought more cautiously than he usually does, which made sense given the fact that he was fighting the equivalent of a Sherman tank that’s firing live ammunition. At times, David tried jabbing. That didn’t work. At times, he tried fighting more forcefully to back Golovkin up, which is like trying to back up a brick wall.

Through it all, Golovkin moved inexorably forward.

To again quote Jimmy Tobin, “The ground opponents give Golovkin is usually shoveled onto their graves. Those who fire on Golovkin wind up no better, and very often worse, than those who choose to flee.”

In round five, a hook to the body sent Lemieux to the canvas, either as a delayed reaction or, more likely, because David took a knee to compose himself. Gennady then landed right to the jaw while David’s knee was down. Referee Steve Willis should have warned Golovkin for what appeared to be an accidental foul and given Lemieux time to recover. He did neither.

Lemieux rose and continued to fight. Those who remember the first bout between Roy Jones and Montell Griffin appreciate how differently David, to his credit, handled the situation. Lemieux fought courageously, but his cause was hopeless. At 1:32 of round eight, with Golovkin battering him around the ring, Willis stopped the carnage. Golovkin won every round and outlanded his foe by a 280-to-89 margin with a 110-to-54 advantage in power punches.

As for the future; Golovkin and Gonzalez will add to their collection of belts. But that’s no longer the point. Each man is pursuing stardom.

Madison Square Garden was far and away Gonzalez’s biggest stage to date. Team Golovkin is now outfitted by Air Jordan, and Gennady is featured in a new commercial for Apple Watch. The issue of Sports Illustrated that hit the newsstands during fight week devoted five pages to him.

As for pound-for-pound; Andre Ward, by choice, hasn’t fought a credible opponent since facing a debilitated Chad Dawson three years ago. And given Dawson’s dismal ring record since then, one has to go back to 2011 (when Ward bested Carl Froch) to find a true inquisitor.

Gennady Golovkin is #1 on my pound-for-pound list with Roman Gonzalez in second place.

Thomas Hauser can be reached by email at thauser@rcn.com. His next book – A Hurting Sport – will be published by the University of Arkansas Press in November.

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Thomas Hauser

Thomas Hauser is the author of 52 books. In 2005, he was honored by the Boxing Writers Association of America, which bestowed the Nat Fleischer Award for career excellence in boxing journalism upon him. He was the first Internet writer ever to receive that award. In 2019, Hauser was chosen for boxing's highest honor: induction into the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Lennox Lewis has observed, “A hundred years from now, if people want to learn about boxing in this era, they’ll read Thomas Hauser.”

Late Bloomer Anthony Cacace TKOs Hometown Favorite Leigh Wood in Nottingham

Published

12 hours ago

May 10, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Late-Bloomer-Anthony-Cacace-TKOs-Hometown-Favorite-Leigh-Wood-in-Nottingham

Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions was at Motorpoint Arena in Nottingham, England, tonight with a card featuring hometown favorite Leigh Wood against Ireland’s Anthony “Apache” Cacace.

Wood, a former two-time WBA featherweight champion, known for dramatic comebacks in bouts he was losing, may have reached the end of the road at age 36. He had his moments tonight, rocking Cacace on several occasions and winning the eighth round, but he paid the price, returning to his corner after round eight with swelling around both of his eyes.

In the ninth, Cacace, an 11/5 favorite, hurt Wood twice with left hands, the second of which knocked Wood into the ropes, dictating a standing 8-count by referee John Latham. When the bout resumed, Cacace went for the kill and battered Wood around the ring, forcing Wood’s trainer Ben Davison to throw in the towel. The official time was 2:15 of round nine.

Akin to Wood, Northern Ireland’s Cacace (24-1, 9 KOs) is also 36 years old and known as a late bloomer. This was his ninth straight win going back to 2017 (he missed all of 2018 and 2020). He formerly held the IBF 130-pound world title, a diadem he won with a stoppage of then-undefeated and heavily favored Joe Cordina, but that belt wasn’t at stake tonight as Cacace abandoned it rather than fulfill his less-lucrative mandatory. Wood falls to 28-4.

Semi-Wind-Up

Nottingham light heavyweight Ezra Taylor, fighting in his hometown for the first time since pro debut, delighted his fan base with a comprehensive 10-round decision over previously undefeated Troy Jones. Taylor, who improved to 12-0 (9) won by scores of 100-90, 99-91, and 98-92.

This was Taylor’s first fight with new trainer Malik Scott, best known for his work with Deontay Wilder. The victory may have earned him a match with Commonwealth title-holder Lewis Edmondson. Jones was 12-0 heading in.

Other Bouts of Note

In his first fight as a featherweight, Liam Davies rebounded from his first defeat with a 12-round unanimous decision over Northern Ireland’s previously undefeated Kurt Walker. Davies, who improved to 17-1 (8), staved off a late rally to prevail on scores of 115-113, 116-112, and 117-111. It was the first pro loss for the 30-year-old Walker (12-1), a Tokyo Olympian.

In a mild upset, Owen Cooper, a saucy Worcestershire man, won a 10-round decision over former Josh Taylor stablemate Chris Kongo. The referee’s scorecard read 96-94.

Cooper improved to 11-1 (4). It was the third loss in 20 starts for Kongo.

A non-televised 8-rounder featured junior welterweight Sam Noakes in a stay-busy fight. A roofer by trade and the brother of British welterweight title-holder Sean Noakes, Sam improved to 17-0 (15 KOs) with a third-round stoppage of overmatched Czech import Patrik Balez (13-5-1).

Photo credit: Leigh Dawney / Queensberry

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Published

2 days ago

May 9, 2025

David A. Avila

Avila Perspective, Chap. 326: Top Rank and San Diego Smoke

Years ago, I worked at a newsstand in the Beverly Hills area. It was a 24-hour a day version and the people that dropped by were very colorful and unique.

One elderly woman Eva, who bordered on homeless but pridefully wore lipstick, would stop by the newsstand weekly to purchase a pack of menthol cigarettes. On one occasion, she asked if I had ever been to San Diego?

I answered “yes, many times.”

She countered “you need to watch out for San Diego Smoke.”

This Saturday, Top Rank brings its brand of prizefighting to San Diego or what could be called San Diego Smoke. Leading the fight card is Mexico’s Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1, 32 KOs) defending the WBO super feather title against undefeated Filipino Charly Suarez (18-0, 10 KOs) at Pechanga Arena. ESPN will televise.

This is Navarrete’s fourth defense of the super feather title.

The last time Navarrete stepped in the boxing ring he needed six rounds to dismantle the very capable Oscar Valdez in their rematch. One thing about Mexico City’s Navarrete is he always brings “the smoke.”

Also, on the same card is Fontana, California’s Raymond Muratalla (22-0, 17 KOs) vying for the interim IBF lightweight title against Russia’s Zaur Abdullaev (20-1, 12 KOs) on the co-main event.

Abdullaev has only fought once before in the USA and was handily defeated by Devin Haney back in 2019. But that was six years ago and since then he has knocked off various contenders.

Muratalla is a slick fighting lightweight who trains at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy now in Moreno Valley, Calif. It’s a virtual boot camp with many of the top fighters on the West Coast available to spar on a daily basis. If you need someone bigger or smaller, stronger or faster someone can match those needs.

When you have that kind of preparation available, it’s tough to beat. Still, you have to fight the fight. You never know what can happen inside the prize ring.

Another fighter to watch is Perla Bazaldua, 19, a young and very talented female fighter out of the Los Angeles area. She is trained by Manny Robles who is building a small army of top female fighters.

Bazaldua (1-0, 1 KO) meets Mona Ward (0-1) in a super flyweight match on the preliminary portion of the Top Rank card. Top Rank does not sign many female fighters so you know that they believe in her talent.

Others on the Top Rank card in San Diego include Giovani Santillan, Andres Cortes, Albert Gonzalez, Sebastian Gonzalez and others.

They all will bring a lot of smoke to San Diego.

Probox TV

A strong card led by Erickson “The Hammer” Lubin (26-2, 18 KOs) facing Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0, 6 KOs) in a super welterweight clash between southpaws takes place on Saturday at Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, Florida. PROBOX TV will stream the fight card.

Ardreal has rocketed up the standings and now faces veteran Lubin whose only losses came against world titlists Sebastian Fundora and Jermell Charlo. It’s a great match to decide who deserves a world title fight next.

Another juicy match pits Argentina’s Nazarena Romero (14-0-2) against Mexico’s Mayelli Flores (12-1-1) in a female super bantamweight contest.

Nottingham, England

Anthony Cacace (23-1, 8 KOs) defends the IBO super featherweight title against Leigh Wood (28-3, 17 KOs) in Wood’s hometown on Saturday at Nottingham Arena in Nottingham, England. DAZN will stream the Queensberry Promotions card.

Ireland’s Cacace seems to have the odds against him. But he is no stranger to dancing in the enemy’s lair or on foreign territory. He formerly defeated Josh Warrington in London and Joe Cordina in Riyadh in IBO title defenses.

Lampley at Wild Card

Boxing telecaster Jim Lampley will be signing his new book It Happened! at the Wild Card Boxing gym in Hollywood, Calif. on Saturday, May 10, beginning at 2 p.m. Lampley has been a large part of many of the greatest boxing events in the past 40 years. He and Freddie Roach will be at the signing.

Fights to Watch (All times Pacific Time)

Sat. DAZN 11 a.m. Anthony Cacace (23-1) vs Leigh Wood (28-3).

Sat. PROBOX.tv 3 p.m. Erickson Lubin (26-2) vs Ardreal Holmes Jr. (17-0).

Sat. ESPN 7 p.m. Emanuel Navarrete (39-2-1) vs Charly Suarez (18-0); Raymond Muratalla (22-0) vs Zaur Abdullaev (20-1).

Photo credit: Mikey Williams / Top Rank

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“Breadman” Edwards: An Unlikely Boxing Coach with a Panoramic View of the Sport

Published

3 days ago

May 8, 2025

Arne K. Lang

Stephen-Breadman-Edwards-An-Unlikely-Boxing-Coach-with-a-Panoramic-View-of-the-Sport

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards’ first fighter won a world title. That may be some sort of record.

It’s true. Edwards had never trained a fighter, amateur or pro, before taking on professional novice Julian “J Rock” Williams. On May 11, 2019, Williams wrested the IBF 154-pound world title from Jarrett Hurd. The bout, a lusty skirmish, was in Fairfax, Virginia, near Hurd’s hometown in Maryland, and the previously undefeated Hurd had the crowd in his corner.

In boxing, Stephen Edwards wears two hats. He has a growing reputation as a boxing coach, a hat he will wear on Saturday, May 31, at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas when the two fighters that he currently trains, super middleweight Caleb Plant and middleweight Kyrone Davis, display their wares on a show that will air on Amazon Prime Video. Plant, who needs no introduction, figures to have little trouble with his foe in a match conceived as an appetizer to a showdown with Jermall Charlo. Davis, coming off his career-best win, an upset of previously undefeated Elijah Garcia, is in tough against fast-rising Cuban prospect Yoenli Hernandez, a former world amateur champion.

Edwards’ other hat is that of a journalist. His byline appears at “Boxing Scene” in a column where he answers questions from readers.

It’s an eclectic bag of questions that Breadman addresses, ranging from his thoughts on an upcoming fight to his thoughts on one of the legendary prizefighters of olden days. Boxing fans, more so than fans of any other sport, enjoy hashing over fantasy fights between great fighters of different eras. Breadman is very good at this, which isn’t to suggest that his opinions are gospel, merely that he always has something provocative to add to the discourse. Like all good historians, he recognizes that the best history is revisionist history.

“Fighters are constantly mislabled,” he says. “Everyone talks about Joe Louis’s right hand. But if you study him you see that his left hook is every bit as good as his right hand and it’s more sneaky in terms of shock value when it lands.”

Stephen “Breadman” Edwards was born and raised in Philadelphia. His father died when he was three. His maternal grandfather, a Korean War veteran, filled the void. The man was a big boxing fan and the two would watch the fights together on the family television.

Edwards’ nickname dates to his early teen years when he was one of the best basketball players in his neighborhood. The derivation is the 1975 movie “Cornbread, Earl and Me,” starring Laurence Fishburne in his big screen debut. Future NBA All-Star Jamaal Wilkes, fresh out of UCLA, plays Cornbread, a standout high school basketball player who is mistakenly murdered by the police.

Coming out of high school, Breadman had to choose between an academic scholarship at Temple or an athletic scholarship at nearby Lincoln University. He chose the former, intending to major in criminal justice, but didn’t stay in college long. What followed were a succession of jobs including a stint as a city bus driver. To stay fit, he took to working out at the James Shuler Memorial Gym where he sparred with some of the regulars, but he never boxed competitively.

Over the years, Philadelphia has harbored some great boxing coaches. Among those of recent vintage, the names George Benton, Bouie Fisher, Nazeem Richardson, and Bozy Ennis come quickly to mind. Breadman names Richardson and West Coast trainer Virgil Hunter as the men that have influenced him the most.

We are all a product of our times, so it’s no surprise that the best decade of boxing, in Breadman’s estimation, was the 1980s. This was the era of the “Four Kings” with Sugar Ray Leonard arguably standing tallest.

Breadman was a big fan of Leonard and of Leonard’s three-time rival Roberto Duran. “I once purchased a DVD that had all of Roberto Duran’s title defenses on it,” says Edwards. “This was a back before the days of YouTube.”

But Edwards’ interest in the sport goes back much deeper than the 1980s. He recently weighed in on the “Pittsburgh Windmill” Harry Greb whose legend has grown in recent years to the point that some have come to place him above Sugar Ray Robinson on the list of the greatest of all time.

“Greb was a great fighter with a terrific resume, of that there is no doubt,” says Breadman, “but there is no video of him and no one alive ever saw him fight, so where does this train of thought come from?”

Edwards notes that in Harry Greb’s heyday, he wasn’t talked about in the papers as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the sport. The boxing writers were partial to Benny Leonard who drew comparisons to the venerated Joe Gans.

Among active fighters, Breadman reserves his highest praise for Terence Crawford. “Body punching is a lost art,” he once wrote. “[Crawford] is a great body puncher who starts his knockouts with body punches, but those punches are so subtle they are not fully appreciated.”

If the opening line holds up, Crawford will enter the ring as the underdog when he opposes Canelo Alvarez in September. Crawford, who will enter the ring a few weeks shy of his 38^th birthday, is actually the older fighter, older than Canelo by almost three full years (it doesn’t seem that way since the Mexican redhead has been in the public eye so much longer), and will theoretically be rusty as 13 months will have elapsed since his most recent fight.

Breadman discounts those variables. “Terence is older,” he says, “but has less wear and tear and never looks rusty after a long layoff.” That Crawford will win he has no doubt, an opinion he tweaked after Canelo’s performance against William Scull: “Canelo’s legs are not the same. Bud may even stop him now.”

Edwards has been with Caleb Plant for Plant’s last three fights. Their first collaboration produced a Knockout of the Year candidate. With one ferocious left hook, Plant sent Anthony Dirrell to dreamland. What followed were a 12-round setback to David Benavidez and a ninth-round stoppage of Trevor McCumby.

Breadman keeps a hectic schedule. From Monday through Friday, he’s at the DLX Gym in Las Vegas coaching Caleb Plant and Kyrone Davis. On weekends, he’s back in Philadelphia, checking in on his investment properties and, of greater importance, watching his kids play sports. His 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son are standout all-around athletes.

On those long flights, he has plenty of time to turn on his laptop and stream old fights or perhaps work on his next article. That’s assuming he can stay awake.

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