Gennady Golovkin: The next boxing superstar?

Golovkin after one of his fights

Also famous by his nickname ‘Triple G’, this charismatic boxer who hails from Kazakhstan – Gennady Golovkin – is making his presence felt in the world of boxing. Currently holding the WBA (Super), IBF, IBO, and WBC (interim) middleweight championship titles, he made heads turn when he demolished his last opponent, the IBF mandatory challenger Dominic Wade, who was also unbeaten until that fight.

Golovkin knocked him out with 23 seconds still left on the clock in the 2nd round. Thereby, successfully retaining his IBF and WBA middleweight titles and bettering his professional record to 35-nil (35 wins and 0 defeats).

That was his 22nd straight knockout, which took his tally of wins through knockout to 32. Yes, 32 knockouts in 35 matches are not easy and this clearly depicts what a powerhouse he is. As a matter of fact, his achievements are anything but easy.

The 34-year-old has a knockout percentage of 91.42, which is the highest in middleweight championship history and he is hailed as someone who is blessed with a granite chin as he has never been knocked to the canvas in his entire boxing career, neither as an amateur nor as a professional, wherein, he has fought more than 375 bouts.

Golovkin has also enjoyed a magnificent career as an amateur boxer during which he notched up a gold medal in the 2003 World Championships and the following year, he went on to compete in the 2004 Summer Olympics held in Athens, where he won a silver medal.

Following his silver medal haul in the Olympic Games, he decided to end his well-decorated amateur career in 2005 and signed professionally with Universum Box-Promotion (UBP) the next year. He had his first professional fight  against Gabor Balogh, whom he floored in under two minutes into the very first round of the night.

Amidst all the praise which he is receiving, much of the credit for the success enjoyed by the Kazakh goes to his trainer Abel Sanchez, with whom he has been training since 2010. Abel Sanchez was named as SI.com's pick for the Trainer of The Year for 2015, as he has been instrumental in harnessing Gennady's talents and making him the destructive force that he is today.

He has defeated the likes of Floyd Mayweather Sr.(trainer of Floyd Mayweather Jr.) and Peter Fury (trainer of Tyson Fury) in the process. Standing 5 feet 10 inches tall, always wearing a cheerful smile on his face, Triple G completely masks the fierce form which he unleashes on his opponents in the ring.

Golovkin’s impeccable precision and tremendous power, his ability to remain composed in the ring, and with Abel Sanchez in his corner, he is certainly poised for greatness. Thereby, filling in the void after the recent retirements of the octuple world champion Manny Pacquiao and the five-division world champion Floyd Mayweather Jr. and rule the PPV business.

His much-anticipated PPV debut fight against David Lemieux sold slightly more than 150,000 pay-per-view units and witnessed a pre-sale of over 6,000 tickets at the Madison Square Garden, shattering all the previous box office records at the Mecca of Boxing.

It depicts that his ‘Mexican style’ of boxing is very gripping to the viewers, who love a fighter who strives to finish a fight through a knockout rather than someone who is merely satisfied with a win.

With 16 title defenses so far, he is on course to overhaul Bernard Hopkins' record of 20 title defenses in the middleweight category which he might very well accomplish within a year or two. But in the quest to achieve that, he has to convince other pugilists to accept a fight with him because at this moment not many big names are showing much interest.

Once Max Kellerman said to David Lemieux, "People seem to have decided that he (Golovkin) is number one and none of the top middleweights want to get in the ring with him."  
However, following Amir Khan's 6th round knockout at the hands of Canelo Álvarez, Golovkin has become Canelo's mandatory challenger.

And if this fight doesn't fall by the wayside, it will certainly be the biggest fight of the year as both of the pugilists are natural middleweights, are at the peak of their forms, hold excellent professional records and are witnessing a tremendous increase of followers owing to their entertaining style of boxing.

Regardless of what the boxing pundits think, Abel Sanchez once said in an interview, "Canelo is another 8 round fight for Golovkin. Canelo knows it and Oscar (Promoter of Canelo Alvarez) knows it too."

With that being said, Golovkin might just have earned a fight with his toughest opponent so far and a chance to catapult his career and being considered the best in the business.