Golovkin destroyed Rubio like no one ever had. Rubio had been a mainstay of the lower half of the top ten/fifteen of the middleweight division for years.
Rubio had failed every time that he had challenged the elite fighters of the division having been stopped in ten by Kelly Pavlik and went the twelve round distance with Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in two previous title attempts before winning one of those silly interim titles (more on that soon) against lighter competition.
In any event,Rubio lasted less than two against Golovkin,who crushed Rubio with a right hand,left uppercut and then another right hand that sent Rubio crashing to the mat.
Rubio managed to get up a hair before the ten count,but in one of those "I'm going to make it look good and protest,but I really want to pack this in" looks and the bout was stopped.
Golovkin kept his WBA middleweight title the day when Rubio couldn't make weight and Rubio vacated his WBC interim belt on the scales,but Golovkin could win that title with a win,which was easy enough.
Why is that significant?
Well,now that Golovkin has the WBC interim belt,the last line of defense for Miguel Cotto (WBC and Lineal Champ) or Canelo Alvarez (Should he defeat Cotto next year) is eliminated as sooner or later "GGG" will get his chance against one of them or they will finally be clearly exposed as ducking Golovkin rather than passing it away as for financial or promotional reasons.
Who said interim titles were all bad? I think it was me....
Golovkin is so feared that getting that interim belt may finally be his avenue to a big fight.
Andre Ward talks a good game about fighting him,but has fought just twice in three years,has promotional issues and seems less than thrilled to fight again,which considering his less than scintillating style doesn't disappoint me much.
Cotto and Alvarez are going to fight each other first for a huge payday before taking the chance of Golovkin,the unrecognized (by me) WBO title fight winner of Matt Korobov vs Andy Lee might be a target to collect another belt,but the winner isn't going to be anxious to take on GGG and then you have the AAA Al Haymon portion of the division with IBF champ Jermain Taylor,Peter Qullin and Danny Jacobs,which wants zero part of Golovkin.
Set em up and Gennady Golovkin knocks them all down-just as the game should be.
The other HBO bout saw Nonito Donaire's run finally finished as Donaire lost his WBA 126 pound title to the "regular" WBA champ Nicholas Walters.Only in boxing can one organization have three champions in a division and one day I'll try to explain this garbage to you,but occasionally as noted above they can be a good thing accidentally.
The fight was an exciting one and well worth the watch,but what I had suspected over the last year or two finally came to pass-Nonito Donaire did not have the fire that he used to have and Nicholas Walters did.
In an exciting firefight,Walters finished Donaire in the sixth as Donaire groggily rose but was in no condition to continue.
Walters is tall for the division and has great power and a bout against Vasyl Lomachenko looks to be next on the horizon for Top Rank,who promotes both fighters.
That looks to be another good one and will continue to consolidate the featherweight division.
The bonus for this one was the extreme good sportsmanship by both fighters after the bout.
That show of respect is what our sport should be about.
In the boxing challenge,I got a point closer to R.L. Malpica as I picked Walters to win for a point,while R.L selected Donaire.
We both added two points for Golovkin's KO of Rubio and the current standings sit with R.L leading 61-59
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