Golovkin ready for ‘Showtime’ in New York
Published:Middleweight Curtis Stevens will face one of the most feared tasks in world boxing when he steps into the ring with knockout specialist Gennady Golovkin.
Only three men have ever gone the distance with the ‘Kazakh KO King’ and not many boxing heads believe the Brooklyn fighter has any chance of winning the fight, let alone taking the WBA middleweight champion to 12 rounds.
But Stevens has other ideas for the clash at the Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.
“You have kids that are scared of the boogeyman because they hear the folktales about him, you know, it’s just like him (Golovkin),” Stevens told RingTV.com.
“Before people get in the ring with him, they hear the folktales the media is expressing about him. Yes, I believe they are scared before, but I’m not scared of ghosts or a boogeyman.
“I hit just as hard or maybe even harder than he does,” Stevens added.
“How will he adapt when he gets hit? We’ve never seen him get hit before.”
Golovkin has never been in with a puncher of the calibre of Stevens and this contest could come down to who lands the cleanest blow first.
‘Showtime’ Stevens is the massive underdog for the fight, priced at 6/1 with Ladbrokes, while Golovkin is as short a 1/9.
But ‘GGG’ warrants the tag of favourite courtesy of arriving on a 14-fight knockout streak.
Recent Golovkin knockout victim Matthew Macklin only lasted three rounds when they fought back in June. To put that performance in context, Birmingham-born Macklin gamely fought top middleweight Sergio Martinez a year earlier before the Argentinian stopped him in the 11th round.
With this form in mind, it is hard to see anything but another KO victory for boxing’s boogeyman and a move on to bigger and better things as the Kazakhstan star looks to move up the pound-for-pound rankings.
All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.
