GENNADY GOLOVKIN’S KINGDOM
TIMES SQUARE in New York City is often referred to as “the crossroads of the world.” On November 2, 2013, the crossroads moved nine blocks south to Madison Square Garden where Brooklyn and Kazakhstan converged for the middleweight title fight between Curtis Stevens and Gennady Golovkin.
Golovkin was born in Kakakhstan in 1982. He turned pro after winning a silver medal as a middleweight at the 2004 Athens Olympics and had a reported amateur record of 345 wins against five losses. Prior to facing Stevens, he was undefeated in 28 professional bouts with 25 knockouts, and had never been knocked down as an amateur or pro. Sergio Martinez might have been the “lineal” middleweight champion at the time. But Gennady (the WBA belt-holder) had come to be regarded as the best 160-pound fighter in the world.
Golovkin introduced himself to the American public with a fifth-round knockout of Grzegorz Proksa on HBO in 2012. Explosive triumphs over Gabriel Rosado and Matthew Macklin followed. In the ring, he was like a threshing machine cutting through a wheatfield. Or a tank firing live ammunition. Choose your metaphor. He was a technically sound predator who had mastered the art of controlling the distance between himself and his opponent and methodically destroyed adversaries with hard precision punching and a pressure assault. Abel Sanchez (then Gennady’s trainer) likened his pupil’s relentless attack to that of Julio César Chávez in his prime.
Cornerman Al Gavin once
