Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime

The reaction to the Saturday night win by the chin-checker/wrecker from Kazakhstan, Gennady Golovkin, went from a good deal of WTF-ing immediately after opponent Kell Brook’s trainer threw in the towel in round five, in a fight in which the IBF welterweight titlist was competitive and in a round in which he hadn’t been hammered.

We quickly – and fairly – learned that trainer Dominic Ingle wouldn’t be joining the Vinnie Vecchione infamy wing in the pantheon of the sport, as Brook explained that, as of round two, he was seeing multiple Golovkins through a compromised right eye. The next day we heard he’d be needing surgery to repair a fracture on his eye socket.

Then a new narrative analysis emerged, not across the board but in enough places to mark a trend.

Golovkin, many said, was “exposed.” Sample reaction from analysts and fighters and trainers and you saw and heard people saying they now know this 36-0 (33 knockouts) middleweight ace isn’t without holes. Throw some hand speed and elusiveness, belonging to someone with an above-average chin, a resolute heart and oversized stones, at him and that package can beat “3G.”

In Texas, one tutor told me he thinks Brook showed the way to get to Golovkin and scrub that zero from his record. “I had never seen Brook fight much before, really,” said Derrick James, trainer to Errol Spence Jr. “I said he would be too fast. He exposed ‘Triple G,’ I believe.”

Whoah…didn’t GGG maybe have an off night? Or no, this was a case of us seeing deficiencies in Golovkin’s game?

“True,” James said. “Errol would knock both of them out!”

James continued the thought process.

“He spars with heavyweights and cruiserweights every day and these guys don’t have a lot of great skills. Their reaction time is too slow. You can see what Brook is thinking. If it were Errol, you wouldn’t know what he was going to throw next because, he’s thinking so fast, all you see is the punches coming, not his thought process before he throws the punch.”

Fascinating and bold and ballsy. So would Spence take the gig if K2 Promotions’ Tom Loeffler and Team Golovkin wanted to make Golovkin vs. Spence next?

“I have talk to (Spence) about it and I believe he will beat (Golovkin) with skill, power and speed but it’s up to him to actually take the fight because he knows himself so I will let him make his own calls. I will ask him when I see him next.”

My take: You gotta dig the trainer’s unfiltered confidence in his charge. Big confidence, big ask, big match if that were to come to fruition. Golovkin vs. Spence, what do YOU see occurring if that (for now) fantasy league faceoff were made?

Many say Michael Woods was exposed but, look, that’s on you if you decide to peek through the window of any work-at-home dad. Some of us might enjoy working in our underwear.

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