By Jeff Sorby: Unbeaten WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (24-0, 21 KO’s) will be making his fifth defense of his title against Gabriel Rosado (21-5, 13 KO’s) in the co-main event on the Oscar Salido (39-11-2, 27 KO’s) vs. Mikey Garcia (30-0, 26 KO’s) card on HBO at Madison Square Garden, in New York, New York, USA.
Also on the card will be WBO super featherweight champion Roman “Rocky” Martinez (26-1-1, 16 KO’s) making his first defense of his title against challenger Juan Carlos Burgos (30-1, 20 KO’s).
The Golovkin-Rosado fight will mark the second occasion that American boxing fans get to see the hard punching Golovkin fight on U.S television. Golovkin looked sharp in his previous fight on HBO in defeating Grzegorz Proksa last September by a 5th round TKO. This time Golovkin will be facing a bigger fighter than Proksa in 26-year-old Rosado, but who isn’t quite as strong a puncher but he’s arguably a craftier fighter with an ability to make adjustments.
Golovkin needs to look good in this fight to make a case that he deserves the bigger fights against Sergio Martinez and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Golovkin can probably get fights against the likes of Peter Quillin and Daniel Geale even if he looks bad in beating Rosado, but for obvious reasons he wants to shine so he can get Martinez and/or Chavez Jr.
The Mikey Garcia – Orlando Salido fight is headlining the card and it’s going to give boxing fans a chance to see if Mikey is for real or not. He’s got great power, excellent boxing skills, and good size for the featherweight division. The drawback is Mikey hasn’t faced anyone good enough to tell us anything about him.
Mikey’s promoters have matched him so carefully that there’s nothing to know about him other than he can punch hard and beat 3rd tier opposition. They might not have done Mikey any favors by matching him so weakly and then throwing him into the ring with Salido tonight considering Mikey could be out of his league.