Canelo vs. GGG: 5 keys for Gennady Golovkin

5. Establish the jab early

Gennady Golovkin has produced a slew of spectacular stoppages during his historic title reign, but his most impressive performance remains his complete outclassing of Montreal brawler David Lemieux. At the time, Lemieux was viewed as Golovkin’s most dangerous foe, and the fight carried genuine stakes: it was a unification match (Lemieux held the IBF middleweight title then) and Golovkin was headlining on HBO Pay-Per-View.

Although Golovkin knocked Lemieux down once in round five and stopped him on his feet in the eighth, the performance was more surgical than viscerally thrilling. This was largely due to Golovkin opting to turn his left shoulder out toward Lemieux and abuse him with his vaunted jab. Consider these stats: Golovkin landed 170 of 359 jabs (47 percent); that’s 21 connects per round — four times the middleweight average.

Indeed, Lemieux is a far more stationary target than Canelo Alvarez and doesn’t possess the Mexican’s diverse skill-set, which means that Golovkin will likely have a hard time approaching those numbers on September 16. However, he’d do well to adopt a similar fighting posture to disarm Canelo with his jab while shrinking the target for Canelo’s right cross and hook.

Even in Gennady Golovkin’s last fight, a competitive points win over Daniel Jacobs, the jab was key. Jacobs was able to narrowly outland Golovkin in power shots, but the Kazakh connected with 105 jabs compared to only 31 for the Brooklynite. Also, Golovkin threw over 300 jabs against Lemieux and Jacobs; these are marks he’ll want to hit again.