Lemieux instantly begins to assume the body language of a student who walks into a test and realizes he has studied the wrong chapter?
Putting aside all differences in efficiency and instinct, David Lemieux?s decision to take on Gennady Golovkin now seems ill-fated all along. A voyeur could easily have been seduced by a vision of the middleweight bout as a five-star slug-it-out. Lemieux?s nine consecutive wins coming in?all brutal for the loser?had without question given him momentum, along with genuine self-belief.
Momentum, though, is a matter of degrees. Just as you can describe both a summer day and a bonfire as hot, you could ascribe momentum to both Lemieux, a ball trundling down Seventh Avenue, and Golovkin, an asteroid crashing through the Madison Square Garden roof.
Read the pre-bout stories from the generalized sports media. Each author seems to be swept up by the idea of a coronation over the prospect of a God?s honest fight. Writing for the Associated Press, Tim Dahlberg labeled it Golovkin?s ?coming out party.? Over at Sports on Earth, Karim Zidan wrote with the confidence of a soothsayer that Golovkin ?is about to become boxing?s next big thing.? (The article mentions Lemieux once, in paragraph seven.) Those that mentioned the assets of the Quebecois opponent framed them only as prevalidations for the import of Golovkin?s sure victory to come.
To an extent, this was a case of supply and demand. The stories were mirrors for the yen of the male American reader: a new oversized teddy to fill the void Manny Pacquiao left with his wheezing balloon of a loss to Floyd Mayweather last May. Armed with a Kool-Aid smile, a sublime scattershot of merrily-deployed English, and surreal physical power, Golovkin could not have been a better medicine. The alluring simplicity of his moniker?his identical three initials?made him all the easier to embrace.
Even in the theater of the unexpected, a show rarely switches out its star just before the curtain folds, and Lemieux was not meant to fill the same role, despite his handsomeness and sizable fan base due north. Lemieux?s deficit was not just a matter of language proficiency. Nor was it a matter of his more fallible talents or losses he suffered as a prospect. It was in his demeanor. Though engaging, Lemieux gives the impression of a bully. Each utterance of self-certainly and thudding punch seems dispersed for his own validation. Americans do not fall head over heels for many bullies?certainly not Canadian ones.
Golovkin is not a bully. In the ring, he seems far too unfeeling to fit the profile, his blood too cold. His comportment is that of a military sniper. Americans will fall for a winning, wide-grinned sniper. Even more so if he assures them that he loves them right back.
This is why, entering the Garden on Saturday evening, the small number of Kazakhs draped in turquoise flags were joined by so many comrades-in-arms: people of all colors, all sporting GGG hats and shirts. Just behind me in the security line was one such convert, a Boricuan Brooklynite attending his first live boxing match. His tee was animated with a black-and-white photo of Golovkin in a suit and tie, gloves pressed together under the top button, which I complimented. ?Let?s go Lemieux, right?? He jested.
This attendee had first seen Golovkin on television in 2013, and like many, he had been won over in a matter of minutes. That night, fighting in the smaller room in the Garden, Golovkin had retired Curtis Stevens in eight. ?I was rooting for Stevens,? the guy said. ?You know, Brooklyn guy, right? And then??he paused and gave me a look of shock, mocking Stevens? expression after Golovkin floored him with a bulldozer left hook in the second round.
Golovkin?s post-fight interview had clinched it. ?I ask him. You serious? You serious?? Golovkin had told Max Kellerman that night, denigrating Stevens? pre-fight trash talk in the best words he knew. The crowd response was an odd, cascading cheer-chortle crossbreed. ?Yeeeaah, I?m serious!? Golovkin said.
?How can you not love GGG?? the guy in line asked me rhetorically. ?He?s fucking adorable.?
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One of Gennady Golovkin?s go-to lines is ?this not game, this fight.? On Saturday, he was wrong. His bout with Lemieux was neither. It was a coronation. The writers were on the button.
All you need to know about the main event is the difference between Lemieux?s first taste of Golovkin?s power and Golovkin?s first taste of Lemieux?s. Actually, all you need to know is how long it took for each to occur. Golovkin landed his first cannon jab roughly ten seconds into the first round. Lemieux?s first solid punch was a right cross, halfway through the fifth.
If that datum is not telling enough, just watch their reactions to being hit. After eating a few heavy jabs (Golovkin must have landed thirty in the first three minutes), Lemieux instantly begins to assume the body language of a student who walks into a test and realizes he has studied the wrong chapter. He looks uncertain. He bounces on his toes, gathering himself, only to be sent back on his heals once more. He bobs his elbows up and down. He tries to move his head, but it seems to be in the wrong spot every time Golovkin pumps that jab out again, now with more mustard. Lemieux lunges back, but Golovkin is already too far away, so the punch becomes wasted energy. All of Lemieux?s momentum is gone within moments. Then the power punches begin arriving, pounding overtop his hesitant gloves.
Once Lemieux sees that he cannot push Golovkin around, he seems to feel flustered and shrinks. That is the problem with being a bully as a boxer?bullies are too susceptible to feeling. That is why they bully.
Finally, after being hit about a hundred times and hurt more than once, Lemieux does connect with a powerful punch to the jaw. But Golovkin?s reaction to adversity is much different than Lemieux?s. Golovkin responds without emotion, as though he is not even programmed with that algorithm. His eyes zero in, and he goes back to work. Maybe there is just a flicker of vengefulness. In any case, by the end of round, Lemieux has found himself on a knee for the first time, wilting from a left to the abdomen. On replay of the punch that did the damage, Golovkin?s mid-swing expression is murderous.
It was Golovkin?s body work that finished Lemieux?another left to the same sore area on the right side, at the tail end of a barrage in round eight. By then, Lemieux had shrunk to the size of a lightweight. Referee Steve Willis noticed his limp immediately, only allowing Golovkin?ever the technician?a split second to go back upstairs once more before he could step in to end the fight. Golovkin curtsied to the crowd, who pampered him with cheers, popping the cork on champagne that had been icing for hours.
In the row behind me in the upper bowl of the Garden were a half dozen of the Golovkinites, all White and American. Though not the types who would pass up a bar seat in favor of a midnight fight on UniMas, they were as engaged as anyone. ?I can?t wait ?til next Saturday so I can watch it again,? one said to another after the fight was over. ?I?m so jacked right now. I?m so fucking stoked.?
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A boxer?s retirement plans are about as reliable as today?s weather forecast for Halloween. Still, Manny Pacquiao?s time in the sport truly seems unlikely to last the next calendar year, and it is safe to say that the Pacman bandwagon will not go into a vacuum. Many members will soon be looking for a new ride, and one with familiar features. Enter GGG.
Golovkin may never exceed Pacquiao?s peak popularity?his early pay-per-view returns are a reality-check in terms of how far he still has to climb?but selling out a 20,000 arena is an auspicious step forward. A torch-passing of this sort somehow seems preordained: In contemporary sports, new phenomena have a funny way of happening right as the public develops a new appetite for one.
Golovkin is a marvelous watch and a priceless listen, and the presence of more eyes and ears is benign at the very least. Barring an unexpected loss to a slickster or, God forbid, a victory that is overly injurious to an opponent, his span of performances on the Garden?s main stage may surpass the bulk of the big drama shows taking place twelve blocks to the north.
Yet the media-fueled and buzz-driven trend of star-making also renders Golovkin?s rise as somewhat capricious. (By less myopic measures, Golovkin is not even the biggest star to fight in the States last weekend. Koki Kameda, who lost his super flyweight title fight with compatriot Kohei Kono the night before in Chicago, had earned consistent eight-digit TV audiences in Japan.) If Pacquiao is replaceable among the casuals, Golovkin may be too, if circumstances demand such a course.
For now, Golovkin is winning a place in a welcoming American consciousness. His charm in front of a microphone and his attack on an adversary may be equally calculated, but so too is their digestion. In a country willing to look abroad for their boxing heroes, and in a world in which they can be delivered via promotions and pen strokes, there is not a fighter today who better plays the part.
