By: Sean Crose
Some will say he looked like his old self. Some will say he looked like he just stepped out of a pyramid. No matter. After being out of the ring for over a year, Gennadiy Golovkin returned Friday night with a dominant performance over widely unknown mandatory challenger Kamil Szeremeta. Two things about this bout were of particular note. The first was that Szeremeta was as tough as they come. The second was that Golovkin remains almost brutal to watch once he’s breaking an opponent down.
The 21-1 Szeremeta was sent to the mat in the first round and was sent to the canvas a subsequent three more times, the last time with a jab. Szeremeta kept getting up, but his performance simply didn’t improve. The the 41-1-1 Golovkin simply kept beating him up. As Floyd Mayweather famously claims, there’s levels to this game, and Golovkin was levels ahead of Szeremeta, the mandatory challenger for Golovkin’s IBF title. Moving forward, jabbing like a master, and thudding to the body, Golovkin, at 38 years of age, showed that he can still impress. Whether or not he can still impress against the best in the business may remain to be seen, but it’s obvious the man can remains a frightening ring presence.
Credit needs to go to the fight’s referee, Telis Assimenios, for wisely walking over to Szeremeta’s corner and stopping the fight after the seventh. The man was simply taking too much punishment and the health of a fighter has to be taken into consideration after a certain point. In the case of the gritty Szeremeta, the man needed to be saved from himself. The chance of winning by that point wasn’t worth the risk of Szeretaking taking more punishment from the fearsome defending champion.
The question is now what’s next for the Kazakh warrior? The answer to that question, however, isn’t easy to come upon. There’s talk of Golovkin facing off against the hard hitting Jaime Munguia next. There’s also, of course, still talk of the man getting in the ring with arch rival Canelo Alvarez for the third time. Munguia is frankly the more likely opponent. Still, the biggest possible fight for Canelo remains the fighter known as GGG, a man the red haired star has never truly defeated convincingly.
The Gennadiy Golovkin-Kamil Szeremeta card was aired live on DAZN from the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Florida.