Gennadiy Golovkin dominates Szeremeta, wins stoppage in 7th round

Gennadiy Golovkin, promoting it all, broke a record tonight with his 21st middleweight title defense, completely dominating Kamil Szeremeta to stop him after seven rounds of one-way action.

Whether you want to count the record or not (there are reasons not to), Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KO) dominated in this fight as he has against so many in his career. The 38-year-old star from Kazakhstan will receive a lot of “GGG of yesteryear!” hype of some corners for this win, but it was a mismatch on role (Golovkin was a -2500 favorite) and he played like one in the ring.

Szeremeta (21-1, 5 KO) is a former European champion and was the IBF mandatory challenger, but he was never seen as a real threat to GGG, and that is how he developed in the ring. Golovkin dropped Szeremeta in the first, second, fourth and seventh rounds, and there was simply nothing in the game that a very close Polish opponent could not do.

Golovkin worked his famous strong jab very well, he got close to the body when he wanted to, mixed his shots well up, and when he landed on punches, Szeremeta had trouble handling power. With Szeremeta’s own power limited, Golovkin feared little in return, and there was nothing Szeremeta could do to discourage attacks when Golovkin felt like letting go.

“I felt very comfortable. I work hard, I had a lot of time, I had a lot of good people to me. I am very proud of my team, ”said Golovkin. “I respect the coach and Kamil’s corner, they are very smart, because, you know, I was finished. Come on guys. I felt my jab, my power, my timing. “

Golovkin said he let the fight go further than necessary, and then did not call the Canelo-Smith winner tomorrow, but said he would like to fight the victor.

“I’m open for anyone, the best opponents for me, for business, for DAZN, I’m ready,” Golovkin said. “I hope tomorrow is a great event and that the best one wins. The fans will win that one. “

Hyun Mi Choi UD-10 Calista Silgado

Choi retains the WBA 130-pound title, although Silgado couldn’t win it because he lost weight by one pound on Thursday. Pretty good fight here, with Choi (18-0-1, 4 KOs) mostly beating Silgado (19-12-3, 14 KOs), who was very good but not consistently at Choi’s level. Silgado had his moments with some power shots, and possibly took a few rounds. BLH had it 97-93 for Choi, while the official judges had it 97-93, 98-92 and 99-91.

Choi, 30, who was born in Pyongyang and now lives and fights in Seoul, is in a good position when it comes to getting big fights. Matchroom has Choi under contract, as well as IBF champion Maiva Hamadouche and WBC champion Terri Harper. There’s also WBO champion Mikaela Mayer, who’s with Top Rank, but could very well have a fight with one of them, and perhaps eventually lead to a full unification, which Eddie Hearn has said he wants to see.

For her part, Mayer is interested:

John Ryder UD-10 Mike Guy

A brutally bad fight to watch, as Guy (12-6-1, 5 KO) came only to break down and survive, he didn’t put any real effort on offense but was also able to neutralize Ryder (29-5, 16 KO) . at least as for Ryder he doesn’t look good here either.

Honestly, the less said about this the better. Ryder, 32, is moving on and should probably forget about this fight. He’s still one of the top 10 super middleweight for now. Guy, 39, did what you would expect. He acted like he thought he had won, and one judge did it with Ryder 96-94, but the other two were more in line with everyone else at 99-91 and 100-90.

Carlos Gongora TKO-12 Ali Akhmedov

Matchroom boxing

This is a huge surprise at the betting odds, and an unexpected period, if not a crazy surprise in terms of what both of them had accomplished.

Akhmedov (16-1, 12 KO) had the most enthusiasm, a 25-year-old Kazakh who had shown power and skill, and it looked like he would soon be able to take down 31-year-old Gongora (19 -0, 14 KO), a former two-time 31-year-old Olympian from Ecuador, a country that has never had a world champion in professional boxing.

But Gongora overcame the jolt especially in the second round, and he really started to pick up some good momentum in the second half, at least on our undercard. All the judges made Akhmedov enter the 12th round, but they knocked him down twice and the second time it ended:

The victory is absolutely huge for Gongora. It gives him the title of underrated IBO, which is what it is, and you could probably get him into the top 10 at 168 right now, belt or not. He really wasn’t on many radars coming here, while Akhmedov was.

And this was a fantastic, hard-hitting and physically tough fight. Akhmedov got a mark and ran out of gas at the end, and Gongora gave up everything he had to get victory in the ring as well. Hats off to both of them, really.

“I was a little exhausted for the 12th round, but I knew I had to dig deep, and I found that I had to get him out of me, trade with him and win the last round,” Gongora said through a translator. “I felt its power. He’s a strong guy. I almost tasted defeat, but I didn’t come here to lose. I dug deep and in the end, he had to go down, and I put everything in him to do it. “

Reshat Mati TKO-6 Dennis Okoth

“The Albanian Bear” closes his year with another win, improving to 9-0 (7 KO) with a final round stoppage of Okoth (4-5-1, 2 KO), who has now been stopped in three fights in a row. . Mati, 22, didn’t look very good here, actually, but that’s because Okoth was able to mess up a bit effectively, which happens, it’s valuable for young fighters to experience that every now and then.

But Mati was clearly winning the fight as well, and it can also be said that he showed good poise and patience, didn’t push too hard, didn’t get careless. He got hit by some Okoth right hands along the way, but he kept his cool. The highlight was perhaps Mati doing a Shawn Michaels kip-up in the sixth round, before he stopped when Okoth appeared to suffer a leg injury: