Gennady Golovkin: The Biggest Drama Show

Through a proxy, I asked the world's most dangerous puncher, pound for pound, to sock me in the gut.

The fighter is middleweight champion Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin, who knocked out ostensibly the riskiest opponent of his career Saturday night—fellow banger David Lemieux, of Montreal—and in the process strengthened his claim to the above title and several others: Most dangerous. Most intimidating. Most naturally destructive.

One could argue it was just another triumph in a long litany of them for the fighter known as GGG (pronounced "Triple G"). And once again, the opponent, while a strong title-holder, was no world-beater. If Golovkin is Hagler, he has yet to meet his Hearns.

But there was something distinguished about this demolition anyway—a feeling that GGG had advanced both in the sport and the public consciousness. Entering the bout, his gaudy numbers were widely spread: 33-0, with 30 knockouts—a KO rate of 91 percent. Plus 198 straight weeks in the Ring Magazine's Middleweight Top 10, a Taylor Swiftian accomplishment of chart-topping.

Oh, and he's never, ever getting back together—I mean, er, he has never been knocked down, in more than 300 amateur and professional fights.

Still, Saturday night seemed to be a coming out party, despite those records. Madison Square Garden was filled to capacity—18,200, give or take. Golovkin headlined his first pay-per-view, which hundreds of thousands of people, maybe even a million-plus, bought (exact figures won't be released till later this week and will go a long way toward determining Golovkin's commercial appeal). The media contingent was as large as ever for a GGG event.

All a major contrast to the far more intimate bout Golovkin had in the Garden's 5,600-seat Theater two years ago, when he was still something of a trade secret. Seated ringside, I had the latitude in the Garden's "small room" to bounce from one row to another, chatting up a lawyer who specializes in boxing contracts, the promoter of Golovkin's opponent, a friend of mine and his special lady (now wife). Not that the Garden's militant ushers didn't try to stop me, but in 2013 it was doable, at least.

That's no longer the case.

Golovkin stars in a new Apple Watch commercial. It appears he's on the verge of signing with Nike's Jordan brand: he and his trainer walked out Saturday bedecked in Jordan gear, he previously trained before the media in Jordan gear, and when asked about a deal, his spokesman said, "There is nothing in place at this time," but wouldn't comment on whether something would be in place soon. Golovkin has thrice fought in Monte Carlo, essentially because the royalty there loves him, without ever having taken a bout in Vegas, or needing to. You know in The Hangover when Zach Galifianakis asks a concierge whether the hotel was Caesar's actual palace? Golovkin has adopted the same mindset: if he's gonna ply his trade in a royal residence, he'd prefer it be the real thing.

GGG is now far too big a star for this Single G to take ownership of the room. Or as he put it himself in the prefight press conference, "Madison Square Garden is like my second home."

In just two years, he has built himself a worldwide following that includes not only boxing buffs and his compatriot Kazakhs but also modest fight fans and some general sports lovers. By the time HBO replays his latest bout this Saturday, the news and social media coverage will likely have added non-sports-fans to the base.

A TMZ cameraman won't be far behind.

How has he done it?

It's simple, really. He combines two rarely joined traits, boyish enthusiasm and adult wreckage.

Before his last two fights, including one in the old Forum in Inglewood, California, Golovkin said he'd fight "Mexican-style" for the Hispanic crowd, which is how he fights anyway: pushing forward, punishing the body, watching the opponent wilt.

Problem was, the only fighter with the cojones to face him, Willie Monroe, Jr., had just stepped up from a lower-level tournament. Golovkin had him primed for the knockout in the second round—which was far too early for GGG, who always promises viewers (in his adorable brand of broken English) "a big drama show."

So he carried Monroe for several rounds, letting himself be hit. "I give him chance," GGG said in the post-fight, in-ring interview. "I just stay here. I say, 'C'mon, bring big drama show, let's go, let's do it.'" The sold-out Forum roared for him then.

"I not lose control. This is my big present."

Golovkin's latest pet phrase, which he delivers with his usual smiling sincerity, involves the word "importance." As in: "I think we have three or four fighters [in the middleweight division], and it's very important who is No. 1."

Or of his skills versus the now-beaten Lemieux's: "It's not just power. I'm in just a little bit different class—timing, speed, discipline, and position. This is very important."

A listener gets the sense that GGG, unconstrained by usage rules he was never taught, simply wants to have the same fun with English he does with overmatched opponents—all in the service of a very humble type of self-promotion.

That humility, the Jekyll-and-Hyde-ness, is part of the appeal. Even in the ring, he flashes a bright smile, beneath big ol' cheeks and chestnut hair. He'll beat a man senseless, with the jolly mien of a boy romping about a sunny beach and never once come off as a bully—more like a playground leader, like brave Tommy in the Rugrats.

In fact, this millennial suggests that be his walkout music next time he brawls.

What makes this grinning schoolboy so strong?

My personal theory is that he's a physical anomaly in the vein of Secretariat. The horse had an extraordinarily large heart. I think 160-pound Gennady must have muscle fibers behind the shoulders no less advantageous. Maybe he has more fast-twitch fibers or the tissues process glycogen unusually efficiently. I don't know for sure—I'm just a writer, after all, not John Brenkus of Sports Science.

So I asked Brenkus's boxing equivalents. Gordon Marino, a friend who writes about the fight game for the Wall Street Journal, and is likely the only boxing trainer in the world who's also a university philosophy professor, has cited Golovkin's strong lower body, firm balance, and relentlessness as keys to his power.

Former boxing manager Charles Farrell told me in an email that you couldn't pinpoint any one factor; it was their sum total: "Golokin's power (and I wouldn't categorize him as a murderous puncher—merely a first rate one) comes from a combination of great leverage with his legs, perfect arc of his punches (short, delivered with no excess), accurate punch placement, and naturally heavy hands."

Charles is 10 times the expert I'll ever be, but that last bit threw me again—to me, saying someone is forceful because they have so-called heavy hands is tautological. It's like saying the dude can punch because when he lands, his punches hurt.

So I asked the PR man for K2 Promotions, Bernie Bahrmasel, whether his company would let Golovkin punch me in the liver, so I could better understand how GGG pulls it all off. I said I'd wear a trainer's body protector and that I'd ensure no other writers saw, lest they get the idea to bother GGG for their own punishment.

Given the request's impertinence, Bernie was actually quite kind in dismissing it, saying that if I came to Big Bear, California, where GGG trains in Abel Sanchez's The Summit gym, perhaps I could experience the blows there. I don't know whether I have that much Plimpton in me—we'll have to see.

Meanwhile, the best alternative to being nailed was debriefing a fighter who had been. Curtis "Showtime" Stevens couldn't leave his corner after absorbing eight rounds of GGG blows in November 2013. Stevens's face, while he dropped to the canvas in the second round, was one of the first major indications that GGG was a different breed. It was a gaping expression, equal parts shock and awe. I expected power, the look said, but not like this.

Last week, Stevens took a break from his work in California, where he's in Canelo Alvarez's current training camp, to describe the sensation. "It was a flash knockdown," he said, more than a trifle defensively. Later, he told me that he had simply failed to executive his game plan, but Golovkin hadn't prevented him from doing so.

When I asked him whether he was going to watch Saturday night's scrap, the defensive tenor of his voice completely changed. Of course, he said—he wanted to see what Lemieux might try to beat the mighty Golovkin.

Deny the man his due? Fine. But go so far as to miss seeing him? Never.

None of which means Golovkin is here to stay. Just because a boxer crosses over into the mainstream doesn't mean he can't fall back. Tyson and Holyfield made it. A tremendous talent like Riddick Bowe, who took two of three from Holyfield, continues to fade—and the sport is half as popular now it was then.

Then there's the Big City, a fickle, half-lit beast. The originators of hip-hop—guys such as Grand Mixer D.St, laid down tracks just blocks from Madison Square Garden, in Bill Laswell's Celluloid Records studio. But you don't know those names. How long before you forget what GGG even stands for?

Which is why you're about to encounter GGG everywhere.

Every writer, myself included, who cares a whit about the rough business of carving out space for yourself in this world—with nothing more than your bare hands and your brain and whatever help you're lucky enough to receive on this fucked spinning orb of a home—wants to see Golovkin become known. Sure, there are more technical boxers—Vasyl Lomachenko, Guillermo Rigondeaux, and Andre Ward are just three—and perhaps those whose struggles to the top have been much greater than Golovkin's, who have risen higher with less natural talent.

But no fighter is so easy to root for, so naturally magnetic. Golovkin is an elemental force and, unlike so many fighters, he's seemingly clean in every way (no performance enhancing drugs, no rap sheet, no open secrets). I asked Jim Lampley, the voice of HBO boxing and the announcer of Saturday night's fight, to describe his appeal: "Novice and armchair fans can marvel at the sheer power. Sophisticates can revel in absorbing the profound technique, most particularly the footwork. Mostly, though, it is that the cheerful predator has a compelling mystique."

Our asking you to remember him, then, is no less than a quest for our own remembrance. He fought 'em tough, we wrote 'em tough, to borrow a phrase from the Philadelphia boxing writer Bernard Fernandez. Meaning: it's incumbent upon those of us who can't be GGG to describe him, to set down his traits for posterity.

Because if the world's not gonna take note of Golovkin, what chance do the rest of us have?

Last Tuesday, four nights before the fight, I invited Abel Sanchez, GGG's trainer, and Sanchez's wife, Beverly, to join my date and me for dinner in the West Village (Golovkin himself was still a pound over the 160 lb. middleweight limit and couldn't eat out).

Ultimately, Abel was too anxious about the upcoming bout to join us, so Beverly came by herself after dinner and met us for drinks. We wound up at a wooden table in some nondescript bar on Hudson Street. After we had all consumed a little, Beverly began scrolling through her iPhone photos. One shot after another was a vivid picture of Monte Carlo, the place a seeming blur of white-arched palaces, marble columns, crystal chandeliers, wet bars covered in undoubtedly-expensive translucent blue tiles.

And there, in the middle of all that opulence, the lone constant in those shots was Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin—smiling—a 33-year-old, 5'10" man from Karaganda, Kazakhstan, now living in Los Angeles with a wife and child.

The journey boggles the mind.

Yes, there is boxing work yet to be done. Because of the sport's inane politics, there are essentially two leagues of fighting in the US: Premier Boxing Champions, begun by impresario Al Haymon with $400 million in venture capital, and the chaotic remainder of the market. Golovkin and HBO are in the second category, which means he'll likely face the winner of HBO's next middleweight contest, Canelo Alvarez versus Miguel Cotto, on November 21.

On the PBC side, there's another clash between two top 160-pounders: Danny Jacobs versus Peter Quillin on December 5. By New Year's Eve, we'll have uncovered the world's best fighters at middleweight. What a year 2016 could be, then.

But the two sides of this business battle have joined forces only once—to produce Mayweather-Pacquiao, and you saw how that went—so it's unlikely Golovkin will be able to bridge the gap. There's a greater chance he'll wrangle a name from another weight class, even if it means putting himself at a slight disadvantage. But you can bet he'll be OK with that—with nearly anything thrown his way inside that four-sided pen where mauling's legal—at least for now.

Because being forgotten is a bitch, and GGG embraces fully the great joy of becoming known.