WBA Middleweight Champion Gennady Golovkin retained his title belt at the Theater in Madison Square Garden on Sat. Jan. 19 against Gabriel Rosado while Rocky Martinez held onto his WBO Junior Lightweight Championship against Juan Carlos Burgos. However, the outcomes were quite different. The 30-year-old Golovkin of Kazakhstan left the ring with his title by stopping Rosado in the seventh round while Martinez hung onto his crown via a controversial 12-round draw.
It was Golovkin’s sixth straight title defense and it was quite a bloody affair as Rosado of Philadelphia was bleeding heavily from cuts above his eye, his nose, and mouth. Golovkin, who won a silver medal in the 2004 Summer Olympic Games for his homeland, was in control of the fight all the way and although his punches don’t appear to have much power or speed, they certainly do a lot of damage. However, he wasn’t able to drop Rosado, who was moving up in weight to the 160 lb. division from the lighter junior middleweight class.
It was an accumulation of punches that stopped the fight as the 26-year-old Rosado was a bloody mess by the seventh round and his corner threw in the towel with the official time of the stoppage coming at the 2:46 mark. Golovkin landed 208 punches out of the 492 that he threw for a connect percentage of 42 while Rosado threw 345 and landed 76 of them for a 22 per cent connect ratio. It was a pretty good showing for Golovkin when you consider he was confined to bed with an illness just 48 hours before the fight. However, he didn’t want to cancel the bout and carried on regardless.
After the bout the champion said he feels fine, but felt he should have been able to knock Rosado out and could have done better. With the win, the unbeaten Golovkin sees his pro record improve to 25-0 with 22 Kos while Rosado drops to 21-6, with 13 Kos. Rosado jumped up in weight to take the fight as it provided a better payday and a chance to win a coveted world title.
The Martinez vs Burgos title bout wasn’t as dramatic and action-packed as many fans thought it would be. It was another classic matchup between a Puerto Rican boxer in Martinez and a Mexican in Burgos, but the usual spark that accompanies these rivalries was missing. Burgos seemed to control the action and most broadcasters and fans thought he had done enough to lift Martinez’s belt, but that wasn’t the case.
When the judges’ scorecards were read it was announced that Martinez had retained the title by scores of 116-112, 111-117, and 114-114. It was Martinez’s first title defense since winning it by an exciting split decision over Miguel Beltran in September. The 29-yeqar-old champion saw his record go to 26-1-2 with 16 Kos after the draw while Burgos, 24, went to 30-1-1 with 20 Kos. Burgos went to the body often and according to statistics he landed more punches in 10 of the bout’s 12 rounds.
Because of the closeness of the scoring and the controversy surrounding the fight, there’s a good chance the two will meet again in a rematch.
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