Gennady Golovkin will enter the ring on July 26 at Madison Square Garden (HBO, 9:30 pm ET/PT) as the favored fighter in his IBO middleweight title defense against Daniel Geale, bringing with him a knockout rate of 89 percent. That doesn't mean Geale can't scrap though.
"I don't wanna say too much but I'm definitely confident in my power, it's improved. In the last 6-12 months I've definitely made a lot of improvements," Geale told SportsWorldNews.com.
Daniel Geale discusses playing the underdog role with Sports World News
Most of the pre-fight talk has been about Golovkin's prodigious power, which has allowed him to win by knockout or stoppage in 16 straight fights. Geale has 16 wins by way of knockout too, including his most recent win over Garth Wood.
"It always gets me a little fired up knowing that people are taking me for granted. For most of my career I've had people saying to me that I can't punch, I'm not powerful, I'm not strong. Most of the time all these other guys trying to beat me they just add fuel to the fire and add more motivation," Geale said.
Gennady Golovkin tells SWN he is expecting top-notch form from Geale
While Geale wants to prove he can hurt Golovkin, his main focus will not be on trading with him.
"The main thing for me is that I won't be easily hit. The guy has a lot of power, and good timing and footwork and a good jab, but I won't be giving him an easy target. If you're going to lean on the ropes you're going to get hit, there's no two ways about it," Geale said, indicating he plans on using his movement to evade most of what Golovkin throws.
He also said returning fire, if he's caught by Golovkin, is extremely important.
"If he does land something or if he is coming forth with lots of punches it's about making sure he doesn't land too often and make sure there's something coming back at him."
Golovkin is aware that Geale can be dangerous. In an interview with SportsWorldNews.com, Golovkin talked about Geale's constant movement, but also mentioned his punching.
"I know that he has his style, he is very fast, very quick. He throws a lot of punches. I understand he is very experienced," Golovkin said. "It won't be like what happened with Daniel Geale's other fight [vs. Darren Barker], when he didn't seem as serious."
No matter what observers say about Geale though, he will not go outside his game plan to prove his power, or win more convincingly to avoid a close decision.
"It's always tricky in close fights. You always want to be as convincing as possible and sometimes the decision goes your way and sometimes they don't," Geale said on a conference call.
"What u do with that makes you who u are. Those losses pushed me on to train harder and want to achieve more. I didn't feel like I was beaten [vs. Barker] so it motivated me to train harder. There's always going to be bad decisions but you can't let that affect you."
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