Can Golovkin be next pay-per-view champ?
Inside a chic westside Italian eatery, the most destructive fighter in the world is casually, if incongruously, attired: indigo-blue shirt with epaulettes, faded jeans, snazzy suede loafers. With boyish, close-cropped hair and a killer smile, Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin comes off as uber preppy and ultra-American. He looks more like a UCLA grad student than the relentless mid- dleweight champion who separates men from their aspirations and senses.
A fashionista? Perhaps, but the Kazakhstan émigré is no poseur. Golovkin offers no tough-guy facade; not a tattoo from here to Malibu festoons his well-carved 160-pound torso. In the social media-saturated world of athletic packaging and posturing, Golovkin is as authentic as a Gleason’s Gym spit bucket.
First, and foremost, Golovkin is a fighter.
These days, “GGG” might be the perfect antidote for those suffering from Floyd Mayweather Jr. fatigue, but can he become a bankable, mainstream, pay-perview television attraction? The curtain on his pay-TV debut will be pulled back Saturday when the 33-year-old unbeaten knockout artist (33-0, 30 KOs) fights lightly regarded Canadian clubber David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) before an expected sellout at Madison Square Garden in New York.
“I call it the perfect storm,” said Tom Loeffler, the champion’s promoter. “GGG has that rare quality of being exciting in the ring and likable outside. He is the antithesis of Mayweather.”
The humble Kazak, a husband and father, has a far different pedigree than most hard-nosed pugilists: Golovkin earned the equivalent of a college degree in his homeland. He speaks four languages. He says he doesn’t smoke, drink, gamble or do illegal drugs. There is about as much chance of seeing him in a strip club as seeing him in jail.
Golovkin is a geopolitical, cross-cultural and sports success story who is beginning to gain traction. Perhaps it’s his time to break into the big time: This month, Apple Watch showcased Golovkin shadowboxing in a video advertisement.
Who needs street cred when you have those credentials?
“I went to university every day for five years” to study sports and economics, Golovkin told USA TODAY Sports. “I thought, ‘I must — must — go to school.’ Look, my hands, these are like guns. When you have guns, you can relax. But in the future, you need something else. I love and respect my sport, but I am not a bad guy. First, I am a sportsman.”
Golovkin’s extraordinary story is one of remarkable achievement in the ring and personal triumph over the tragedy he experienced as a boy in the working-class city of Karaganda.
“Gennady is all the best that boxing can be,” said Ron DiNicola, his attorney.
The son of a Russian coal miner and a Korean lab worker, Golovkin could be admired and adored in the USA, too, if people knew who he was or how to pronounce his last name (GO-lovKIN). He hopes to change that.
The best part for sometimes-exploited boxing fans: Golovkin always comes to fight.
Golovkin prefers to do his entertaining inside the ropes, paying homage to a bygone era when down-and-dirty boxers valiantly confronted all on-comers and did so in an entertaining fashion. Mexican fight fanatics rave about Golovkin’s high-pressure style, one highlighted by withering body-snatching assaults that remind them of their great champion, Julio Cesar Chavez. He is a favorite among Latinos when he fights in Los Angeles. They chant, “Triple G! Triple G!”
THE ‘OTHER’ GOLOVKIN Gennady, by most accounts, was not even the best fighting Golovkin. That unofficial crown went to his twin brother Max. Had it not been for serendipitous timing, the lives of Gennady and Max might have been reversed: Gennady was born 15 minutes sooner.
“Because he was the older brother, that is how they decided who would turn pro,” Loeffler said. “Max stayed behind and took care of their parents. It was a big sacrifice.”
By all accounts, Max was the superior fighter, seemingly born with Mike Tyson-like aggression. Gennady preferred soccer as a boy.
“(Max) was more of a fighter,” said Abel Sanchez, who has trained Golovkin for five years. “Gennady is more of a nice guy. When Max gets mad, he gets mad. He has a mean streak. Max is always serious — he never jokes. You never will see him smile. Gennady does not have that (attitude). He smiles at everything.”
No matter, the older brother’s ring malevolence has produced devastating results. Golovkin’s furious, two-fisted attack has helped him earn 20 knockouts in a row. No middleweight champ in history has a higher knockout percentage (91%) in title bouts.
Golovkin does not know any other way to fight. He has had to do so since his brothers, Vadim and Sergey, offered up their (sometimes-terrified) little brother to older, taller and stronger Kazak boys — first scraps and later in the gym.
“We would walk into a gym, and my brothers would say, ‘ OK — you tall guy over there, maybe you want to fight this small guy?’ ” Golovkin said, shaking his head at the memory. “It was crazy. I’ve never been a tough guy but always there was a provocation. That was a long time ago. Today, boxing is important to me and to my family.”
Through an interpreter, Max said, “We grew up knowing we had to hold our own on the streets.”
As a boy, Golovkin was forced to learn the art of self-preservation during a sometimes-grim up- bringing. In the early 1990s, the area brimmed with violence and conflict among area rivalries in the post- Soviet breakup. Golvokin’s childhood was “very, very difficult for him,” Sanchez said.
“Dangerous time, dangerous area,” Golovkin said.
“Every two days, I had a street fight. I was living a different life. I’ve never been a bad guy — never acted like a tough guy. But every time, there was a provocation. They acted like gangsters. Everybody wanted to beat me up. Maybe because I have baby face.”
With that, Golovkin offers a disarming grin. He radiates the warmth of a man who is secure about who he is, what he is doing and where he is going. His older brothers charted that course.
Gennady idolized Vadim and Sergey. Eventually, they joined the old Soviet army. They never came home; details remain sketchy. The twins were 10. Gennady’s grief was unspeakable. “When we lost them, we began looking at the world through different eyes,” Max said. “It affected the way Gennady approached boxing. He became very serious.”
The loss of his brothers “remains a sensitive topic for Gennady,” Loeffler said.
Indeed. “I remember them. I miss them,” was all Golovkin would say through watery green eyes. MAYWEATHER ‘A BIG FAKE’ In and out of the ring, he offers an unpretentious alternative to Mayweather, the undisputed king of consumption whose flashy lifestyle and bombastic temperament helped create his “Money” persona. Golovkin’s broken English limits his pronouncements, but he clearly prefers his privacy and low-key lifestyle.
“(Mayweather) is not a real guy — I see him as being a big fake, inside and outside. Show me who you are,” Golovkin said. “I’m not like a movie star (seeking publicity) — ‘ Look at my car.’ I like real people. I don’t like fakes.”
Many consider Golovkin to be the real deal but his conundrum is that only die-hard fight mavens know him. So is he the sport’s next major pay-per-view TV’s mega-attraction … or just another talented former Soviet-bloc nation fighter whose crossover appeal will be limited by language and other boundaries? His attempt at transitioning from HBO premium cable star to parent company Time Warner’s next hot boxing pay-per-view commodity is a challenge.
Golovkin’s extended amateur shelf life meant he did not turn pro until he was 24 in 2006. Worse, Golovkin did not fight in the USA until 2012.
After Golovkin ditched his original German managers and signed with brothers Oleg and Max Hermann, Loeffler’s primary goal as a promoter was to provide consistent exposure for Golovkin to American audiences. To achieve that, Loeffler accepted “short-money” deals with HBO, taking a longer view of his fighter’s ultimate market value.
Ultimately, the pay-per-view challenge is, “You don’t have an urban sell, and you don’t have a Latin sell, so you’re just selling to boxing fans,” said former HBO Boxing executive Lou DiBella, a promoter not affiliated with Golovkin. “But I have nothing bad to say about the kid. He is a tremendous talent who works hard to promote himself. He is approachable and, technically, is almost perfect in the ring.”
Golovkin rapidly transformed into HBO’s poster-boy fighting machine, engaging in eight ring rumbles in 32 months. For his pay-per-view debut, anything in excess of 300,000 buys would be considered a home run. Mayweather regularly sold more than 1 million homes — including a record-smashing 4.4 million buys for his bout against Manny Pacquiao last spring — until his last fight in September when Mayweather’s sales dropped below seven figures.
A Mayweather- Golovkin fight has been talked about, but it is doubtful that it will materialize. Mayweather says he is retired. But it is highly unlikely that if he changed his mind and came back to attempt a record 50th consecutive win without a defeat that he would challenge a fighter as dangerous as Golovkin.
“Right now, what is important for (Mayweather) are two things — perfect record and money,” Golovkin said. “He is a good athlete, the best (fighter) in the world. But he is not ‘The Best Ever,’ not TBE (Mayweather’s moniker).”
While not his fault, Golovkin rarely has been tested as a pro after a long, decorated amateur career produced a silver medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics. (He claims never to have been knocked down in a ring, which includes more than 350 amateur bouts). An Eastern European fighter has never transformed into a transcendent star in the USA. That includes the Ukrainian-born Klitschko brothers (Wladimir and Vitali), who became world heavyweight champions.
“Gennady already has solved the personality issue — he already has become a darling,” DiNicola said. “People respect him. They know he is not for sale. They know he is not going to go all goofy and start calling people names. He is respectful to a fault. He is ferocious, but he doesn’t act like an ass. He is a class act.
“The real issue is one of economics: Can he translate (his appeal) into pay-per-view buys? Can he make an economic statement? I think he can. It merely has to unveil itself.”