NEW YORK — His face is without threat and carries only a hint of the force within. When he sits, Gennady Golovkin looks like a genial young man. Maybe it’s the hair, quaintly parted, appearing like it was swept to the side by a harried mother trying to make her son presentable. Or, perhaps it is the smiling. It only stops when he speaks, then immediately resumes in accordance with silence.
The singular indication Golovkin is a worldwide menace, a man who has knocked out 21 consecutive opponents, is the broadening of the bridge of his nose. It’s a fighter’s nose. Something that has been smashed into on occasion by trained fists, though never with the authority that he thumps opposing skulls and rib cages.
Saturday night at Madison Square Garden, Golovkin delivered again. He won for the 34th time. He has not lost. He has 31 knockouts. The technical knockout of unrefined but stout David Lemieux in the eighth round was expected. When fans pay to see Golovkin, they come for this kind of reckoning. They want to see a man who has knocked out another with punches to the body or head, and has done so with each hand. Even his jab lands with a skeleton-rattling thud. No opponent has finished a fight with him in more than seven years.
“This my story,” Golovkin said. “I bring new story for middleweight division. Like a long time ago. Like old school. This my story.”
The challenge for Golovkin, 33 years old and the unified middleweight champion of the world, is transferring that power into the purview of the American populace. He can lead a card in Madison Square Garden and even pull off the rare feat of satisfying pay-per-view customers, who typically spend $49.95, then are left only with complaints after a fight. Not this time. They received what they hoped. Golovkin provided thundering closure, just like the time before, and the time before that.
After the fight, which was Golovkin’s first as a headliner, an interpreter rapidly converted questions in English to the Kazakhstan native. Golovkin was born in Karaganda, Kazakhstan, a former part of the Soviet Union. He leaned gently into Golovkin’s left ear. The fighter stared straight ahead. He smiled.
All answers were in English, even when a question about his fans at home was asked in a Russian dialect. Golovkin’s responses are often brief, which prompts his promoter, Tom Loeffler, to jump in for occasional elaboration. His trainer, Abel Sanchez, fed Golovkin an answer when his fighter was asked how much he would drop in weight to set up a future fight. “You’re the middleweight champion…” Sanchez said under his breath when standing behind Golovkin, having just stepped away from the podium. “I’m champion 160. Middleweight is my category,” Golovkin promptly said into the microphone.
The 2 a.m. edition of SportsCenter served Golovkin’s fight results 15 minutes into the show. ESPN followed the segment with Twitter reaction from famous people about the Michigan/Michigan State game. Throughout the day, the network’s scroll touted the Major League Baseball playoffs, college football results, even upcoming NFL Sunday information. It was a busy day on the sports calendar. But, the lack of mention about Golovkin showed how much work he, and his promotional team, have to do.
Ingraining himself into American culture is happening incrementally. The ongoing improvement in his English could be as beneficial as his punching power. Though, if moderate press conference charisma is not enough for America, force in his hands may be. Nothing satiates fans more than a knockout, and watching Golovkin produces repeated deliveries of the concussed. It’s an emphatic starting point to draw fans.
“He’s knocking people out, and he’s knocking people out often,” Roy Jones Jr. said. “People love knockouts. Knockouts are exciting. That’s what Mike Tyson started from. Mike Tyson was knocking people out every six weeks. People wanted to see that. Unless you are a hell of an extraordinary entertainer, like I was, you’ve got to be knocking guys out all the time or be entertaining some other way. I was the entertainer the other way. He knocks them out. It’s good enough.”
The only thing that thrills the sports-viewing public more than knockouts is a threat of crash. That, too, is a byproduct of exposure, one that can be as lucrative in the short term as sustained success. The felling of a giant is always a money-earner, as is wonder about a subsequent resurgence.
“We didn’t get to stop the press [Saturday],” said Bernard Hopkins, who co-promoted Golovkin’s opponent. “We got the same old thing. ’Triple G? Who’d he fight? Oh, he knocked a guy out.’ OK, that’s not news. That’s news in boxing, but that’s not mainstream.”
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Loeffler, the managing director of K2 Promotions, argues Golovkin is already in the headlines. He pointed to the 20,548 at a full Madison Square Garden last Saturday, a significant rise from 8,572 who watched Golovkin knock out Daniel Geale on July 26, 2014 in the Garden. Golovkin is in a commercial for the Apple Watch, which is a global, non-sports brand. Sports Illustrated ran a profile of Golovkin last week. He fights in Los Angeles and New York for a reason. Floyd Mayweather Jr.’s departure has made opportunity available. The familiarity is coming.
“I think he’s already at that level,” Loeffler said. “Clearly, there’s a lot more work from my side to continue to build his brand and recognition, but I think this was really his coming out party.”
When he entered the ring on Saturday, Golovkin was introduced as from Kazakhstan and California. He trains in Los Angeles, where he moved last year, and Big Bear, California. Multiple Kazakhstan flags populated the filled stands in Madison Square Garden. After the fight, he wrote on Twitter that he was heading “home to LA.” In many ways, they are trying to Americanize his image.
The more he fights in the United States, this was his eighth time, the more he headlines pay-per-view events, this was his first, the more his brand will build. The language barrier, for now, precludes him from extensive or live solo television interviews, as does the reduction of boxing’s panache in the public’s eye. So, he’ll have to rely on that face and the hammerhead hands and slick promotion. His story is there: Hard beginnings, unleashing of talent, producer of fear, deliver of respect. It’s enough to make him smile. Now, it’s everyone else’s turn.
• Todd Dybas can be reached at tdybas@washingtontimes.com.
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