With Floyd Mayweather supposedly retiring ? for the moment, at least ? there will be a jockeying by a handful of deserving boxers to replace him at the top of the pound-for-pound list and to move into his spot as the sport?s No. 1 pay-per-view draw. Enter Gennady Golovkin.
Golovkin ? who will face hard-punching middleweight David Lemieux on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden on what will be GGG?s first PPV headlining appearance ? very well could be next in line to take over Mayweather?s spot.
Other potential future pound-for-pound champs include Andre Ward (who has been inactive while dealing with promoter issues and who?s fought just once in the past two years), Roman Gonzalez (an undefeated flyweight who?s fighting on the Golovkin-Lemieux undercard) and Sergey Kovalev (who destroyed all-time great Bernard Hopkins last November). But Golovkin, even at the somewhat advanced age of 33, might have the best chance of any of them.
He?s the best pure puncher in the sport ? he?s 33-0 with 30 knockouts, meaning his KO percentage of 90.9 percent is better even than Mike Tyson?s percentage after 33 fights (Tyson had an 87.9 KO percentage at the time) ? and he?s got an infectious personality with a goofy grin that endears him to fans. His English isn?t great and, much like Manny Pacquiao, he?d probably have to improve it in order to truly cash in on U.S. soil. But it?s hard to fake his kind of purity, and as one boxing scribe wrote admiringly, ?Golovkin is as authentic as a Gleason?s Gym spit bucket.?
Here?s a sampling of his work.
