Tale of the Tape: Golovkin vs Rolls, Valdez vs Sanchez

We’ve got two notable cards coming tonight on DAZN and ESPN, one headlined by one of the biggest stars in the sport, the other a 126-pound title match.

Over on DAZN (prelims 7 pm ET, main card 9 pm ET), Gennadiy Golovkin returns in a 164-pound catchweight bout against Steve Rolls. Here’s how they stack up:

Golovkin has a very slight height advantage, Rolls a minor reach advantage. As we mentioned in the preview, though, the real difference is in experience, especially high-level experience. As you can see, 21 of Golovkin’s 40 pro fights have been world title bouts; not all world title fights are equal, but that’s a ton. Rolls has never been in a world title fight. His biggest exposure has come via a pair of appearances on ShoBox in 2015 and 2017.

As you can also see, Golovkin is still pretty much unanimously considered the No. 2 man at 160, while BoxRec have Rolls at No. 79. On paper, it’s a mismatch, and our staff all figure GGG gets him out early.

And here’s another one, the Top Rank (prelims 7:30 pm ET on ESPN+, main card 10 pm ET on ESPN) main event from Reno:

Valdez is unanimously seen at No. 4 in the featherweight division, behind Leo Santa Cruz, Josh Warrington, and Gary Russell Jr. That’s fair enough. Sanchez, who doesn’t even have the ShoBox-level fights of Rolls, is No. 132 by BoxRec’s rankings.

Now the hope here is that a Valdez win sets up a fight later this year with Carl Frampton, but unless Sanchez pulls a real shocker, this fight is just kinda “there” on the schedule. Our staff all favor Valdez by stoppage, though to be fair there’s basically no Sanchez footage available, and even if there were, his opposition has been so far off this level that it wouldn’t be much to go by anyway.