Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin is a Kazakhstani professional boxer and the current unified WBA (Super), IBF, IBO and interim WBC middleweight champion. BoxRec currently ranks him as the world’s number one middleweight, and number two pound for pound. The Ring magazine ranks him as the third best boxer in the world and named him Fighter of the Year in 2013.
An aggressive, counterpunching pressure fighter, Golovkin is highly skilled in taking away his opponent’s jab and cuts off the ring exceptionally well. He holds the highest knockout percentage – 91.2% – in middleweight championship history and is said to have one of the hardest chins in modern boxing, having never been knocked down or knocked out in over 375 fights, both as a professional and amateur, or in sparring. As an amateur Golovkin represented Kazakhstan at the 2004 Summer Olympics, winning a silver medal in the middleweight division. In 2003, he won gold at the World Amateur Boxing Championships.
Golovkin is from Karaganda, Kazakhstan, a legendary city where Greco-Roman wrestlers are born and trained for international competitions there. Like many of his athletic friends, Golovkin trained as a wrestler, but preferred the pace of boxing.
In this video interview Golovkin reveals that he wrestled for 7 years in his teenage years. He also likes Judo and BJJ and says that he knows submissions:
Here you an see Gennady Golovkin Wrestling:
