Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin wears his initials and nickname on the waistband of his trunks, often in gold blocks, and inadvertently titillates at least a few ironically minded folks who know whence the term “GGG” originates: Born in the gay community and minted by syndicated columnist Dan Savage, it means “good, giving, and game” – three qualities to which any man might hope a prospective partner aspire.
With his beginner’s command of English, Golovkin almost certainly does not know this, and one hesitates to reveal it for fear of the nickname’s future censorship. It embroiders the youngishly handsome face, statuesque physique and impersonal sadism Golovkin brings in a prizefighting ring too ably to be lost – sprinkling glitter on the complicated texture of prizefighting’s most frightfully entertaining new attraction, an attraction that savagely undid Matthew Macklin in fewer than three rounds Saturday at Foxwoods Resort.
Because artful writing needs no lists, there’s little reason to take what letters form both Golovkin’s initials and a quality valued by sexual subcultures of all orientations, today, and make a bulleted termpaper of them, but here’s this: Golovkin is good in the sense that he is good for prizefighting; as a man with no appreciable promotional allegiance, he is a de facto HBO project and fights whomever the network approves, without much debate, because it gives him what exposure the opening six years of his career wanted and lends the network more credibility than its other staples do, allowing HBO to boast half prizefighting’s most interesting practitioners on cable television right now – with Argentine Lucas Matthysse, the other half, awaiting a Danny Garcia match promised him on Showtime.
Golovkin is giving: He hits with both hands in a way few prizefighters today hit with either hand. Saturday he corralled with his counter jab Macklin, a 33-fight Irishman, or at least a veteran of Irish stock and thus unknown to squeamishness, sending him rightwards, then blasted Macklin with a right cross that sent him leftwards then corralled Macklin again with a left hook that sent him reeling towards the right cross once more, all before Macklin’s unhelpful trainer told him to move away from Golovkin’s right hand, returning Macklin to the very left hand that within 4 1/2 minutes dropped “Mack the Knife” – body oozin’ life – choking, scriggling and grimacing like a man stabbed.
GGG is game as hell, too, because he doesn’t mind milling. In the final moments of his short time in a prizefighting ring with Golovkin, the discomfited moments when, blood dribbling in his left eye and hopelessness enveloping him, Macklin decided it was swing-and-let-swing time, pounding Golovkin with what little other than fear remained in his arsenal, Golovkin became more relaxed in a manner that cannot be faked.
Golovkin’s unkinked face went slacker, a breathing antonym for Paulie Malignaggi’s flicking tongue or Oscar De La Hoya’s nuts-in-my-cheek jawline, and he pursued Macklin with no malice whatever, cursorily tapping Macklin’s guard with a telegraphed right hand – “Good boy, Matthew, leave that right elbow high for Gennady” – before yanking back on his own right shoulder, snapping closed the inside of his left hip, and driving the middle knuckle of his left hand through the geometrical center of Macklin’s exposed liver. It was fleying how Macklin reacted, wincing and plunging leglessly downwards as if what strength Golovkin’s hook left his body was for surds of pain alone.
Golovkin’s reaction indicated the ending was both unexpected and unsurprising; GGG comported himself like a man who went out to fight properly, set his feet in place, defend responsibly, place his punches with leverage and accuracy, and see if the knockout comes – for once a fighter who appeared not to look for the knockout got it effortlessly. That is legerdemain, or its facial equivalent, though, as what makes Golovkin every bit appealing as Matthysse is that he verily does look for the knockout with nearly every punch. It was merely a Golovkin jab 90 seconds after the opening bell that thrust the fight directly out Macklin’s soul.
If there is a possible weakness in Golovkin’s approach to ruining other men it is the energy required a man who throws every punch with ruinous objective; that kind of design frustrated for eight or nine rounds can weary a fighter, and as fatigue makes cowards of all men, someone who was able to deflect fractionally Golovkin’s shots and make Golovkin burn calories for 24 to 27 minutes and encounter the stress of tiring, itself boxing’s most counterintuitively stressful sensation, might come on a fairly average fighter with a stationary head before him, not unlike the man James “Buster” Douglas sent on a mouthpiece-recovery expedition in Tokyo 23 years ago. Who is the man to do that? No middleweight comes to mind.
A prime Sergio Martinez at 154 pounds might have turned the trick, but today’s incarnation has little chance and every right to try. Disregard anything Martinez’s promoter said about that Saturday; he books “Maravilla’s” fights, he doesn’t make them. The wisest course for Martinez is to suggest he’ll be happy to fight in 2014 the winner of a Golovkin-Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. fight; the middleweight champion of the world is in no condition to rematch Chavez right now, much less top whatever that was Saturday – but it’s impossible the winner of GGG-Junior won’t be slightly softer for his participation. Flip in a bad training camp, with a hand injury and a bout with influenza and maybe food poisoning, and, well, one never knows.
Which is to write Sergio Martinez absolutely has earned a chance to ruminate on the matter of GGG for the rest of 2013 and a few months of 2014 before anyone declares Golovkin his better, as that declaration will almost invariably come within 36 minutes of their contesting Martinez’s title, and so, why hurry it?
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
