Inglewood, California: In those early weeks, shortly after Gennady Golovkin moved to California to advance and propel his budding boxing career, his new trainer sat him in front of a dry-erase board.
Abel Sanchez wrote down Nos. 1-12, and put Muhammad Ali’s name at the top. He left the second space blank, and then scribbled the names Sugar Ray Robinson, Floyd Mayweather, Joe Louis, Manny Pacquiao and others until the list was filled.
“I told him by the time we get finished, you’ll be right here,” Sanchez recalled, pointing to the space below Ali’s name. “You’ll be one of the best in the world - you’ll be unbeaten, you’ll be a champion and no one will want to fight you. He looked at me like, ‘Coach, come on, are you crazy?’ “
Sanchez saw something that the rest of the boxing world would soon be privy to. Soon, Sanchez says, no one will be able to ignore the electrifying middleweight who effortlessly carries so many of the sport’s current hopes and expectations.
When Floyd Mayweather walked from boxing last year, he left a vacancy. The sport suddenly lacked a consensus best pound-for-pound fighter, but it was also absent a superstar who could transcend the sport and connect with the more casual sports fan.
Many see Golovkin, 34, as the best possible heir, a boxer with both unimpeachable credentials and an in-ring style that wows crowds and obliterates foes.
“He passes the eyeball test in every way,” HBO analyst Jim Lampley said. “I think it’s kind of surprising to some of us that the general public has not caught on to a greater degree. You can feel the increments of how it’s happening, though.”
Golovkin, known casually as “GGG” or “Triple G,” carries a 34-0 record with 31 knockouts. He has scored a knockout in 21 consecutive bouts, and only two fighters have ever taken him past the eighth round. He’s essentially a buzzsaw on a factory assembly line.
While Mayweather was a showman outside the ring and a defensive-minded bore inside it, Golovkin has thrilled crowds in just about every arena he’s entered. He sold out Madison Square Garden last October for his first pay-per-view show, scoring an eighth-round knockout over David Lemieux to win the IBF title. The bout unified four of the middleweight belts.
Golovkin will lay all those titles on the line on Saturday in Inglewood, California, against Dominic Wade, a District native who boasts an 18-0 record but is considered by most to be overmatched.
Lampley warns that while Golovkin’s knockout streak is impressive, it comes against a string of names that won’t raise many eyebrows.
“Until he does it against an opponent who is seen to be near his league, it’s not going to have the kind of historic impact that those numbers suggest,” he said.
But therein lies the problem: Golovkin is having a difficult time getting the top contenders - fighters like Canelo Alvarez, Miguel Cotto and Andre Ward - in the ring.
“We’ve made offers . . . to just about everybody,” Sanchez said, “and we’ve been turned down.”
Lampley believes that ‘the reluctance of other opponents isn’t just the notion that you’re going to lose.’
“It’s that you’re going to get physically wrecked, that it’ll be devastating for your career,” he said.
Golovkin has yet to put many weaknesses on display. He’s a power puncher who can also box. He’s defensively solid and has shown a strong chin.
In fact, in 350 or so amateur bouts plus 34 professional ones, he hasn’t once been sent to the canvas.
It’s of little surprise that Saturday’s foe isn’t given much of a chance by the boxing literati. Wade, 26, was raised around the District and enjoyed an impressive amateur career. As a pro, he was trained by Barry Hunter early on and now works with Jay Stancil out of the Sugar Ray Leonard Boxing Gym in Clinton, Md.
“Nobody really gave me the chance, so everybody’s kind of looking past trying to see the Triple G and Canelo fight,” Wade said recently. “But you know, you never know what happens in this fight. Maybe, I’ll be the one to shut it all down.”
Most view Saturday’s fight as a precursor to something bigger - the winner of next week’s fight between Cotto and Alvarez. While the boxing world views Alvarez-Golovkin as the sport’s biggest possible matchup, Alvarez promoter Oscar De La Hoya still wouldn’t commit this week to staging the event this year.
The way Sanchez sees it, there is no blocking Golovkin at this point. All eyes are on him, and in a sport in eager for a savior, anything is possible.
