Terence Crawford Might Have Fallen Short Against a Prime Gennadiy Golovkin

Terence Crawford’s narrow win over the faded 35-year-old Canelo Alvarez last Saturday has fans wondering how Bud would have done against a prime former unified middleweight champion, Gennadiy Golovkin.

Why a Prime Golovkin Beats Crawford

1. Power
2. Chin and durability
3. Pressure
4. Size and physicality
5. Courage to mix it up

Movement vs. Power: GGG’s Strategy

Crawford would have surely used movement to try to neutralize Golovkin’s high-powered offense, likely hoping to limit the punch count in each round to a trickle. That was Terence’s method for his razor-close victory over the slow-footed Canelo last weekend.

The prime version of Golovkin appeared to be a far superior fighter in cutting off the ring on movers. So, the chances of Crawford using movement to eke out a decision against Golovkin without battling him in a one-on-one manner would have been slim. The survival rate for Terence could have been mere minutes against the shark-like GGG.

Crawford would have had to fight him. The amount of time that Terence would have been able to stand and brawl with a young Golovkin would have been a handful of rounds in my view. I don’t believe Bud is built for that, fighting against a powerful middleweight like GGG.

GGG’s Early Victories 

• Daniel Jacobs (March 2017, age 34)
• Kell Brook (September 2016, age 34)
• David Lemieux (October 2015, age 33)
• Marco Antonio Rubio (October 2014, age 32)
• Daniel Geale (July 2014, age 32)

Golovkin’s Relentless Pressure and Prowess

What we saw of the bulked-up Crawford (42-0, 31 KOs) against Canelo was that he’d lost much of his speed, and was forced to most during long stretches of each round. It was a similar approach that Kell Brook attempted to use against Golovkin in their fight on September 16, 2016.

That version of Brook was arguably a better puncher than Crawford has ever been and possessed a more powerful jab. Watching the Golovkin-Brook fight back today, there’s no question in my mind that Kell was a more powerful puncher than a prime Crawford has shown.

Brook’s Blueprint for Failure

Kell’s movement was effective initially for the first three rounds, but GGG hunted him down and began to batter him with body shots, taking his legs away by the third round. By the fifth, Brook had nothing left and was forced to battle Golovkin in the pocket, where he was quickly done away with, forcing the referee to halt the contest in round five.

Golovkin suffered his first career defeat against Canelo on September 15, 2018, via a questionable 12-round majority decision at age 36. A year earlier, GGG battled Canelo to a very controversial 12-round split draw on September 16, 2017.

Many fans believed that Golovkin was robbed of a victory against a prime version of Alvarez in their first fight. That was the second contest as well between them.