Saturday on Madison Square Garden’s small stage Kazakhstani middleweight titlist Gennady “GGG” Golovkin will fight American Curtis “Showtime” Stevens, on HBO, in a match of the two middleweights most likely to rend with thoughtless ferocity any overmatched unfortunate set across from them. That is, somebody stopped by, say, Vanes Martirosyan at 154 pounds, as Stevens’ last opponent was, ought tremble at rumors of GGG’s approach. And any man knocked-out by Sergio Martinez last year, as Golovkin’s last opponent was, would do well not to be on Showtime’s side of town when night falls.
OK, the leavening of this match with a pinch of facetiousness was overdue, and so there it is, with a concession directly afterwards: Saturday’s fight will be quite entertaining as it happens, in a manner more suspenseful than dramatic, and should end with one man, more likely Stevens, unconscious before its 36th minute completes. Our sport needs more of that, much more, not less, and who cares, then, if Saturday’s champ is unproved and his challenger more so?
That Gennady Golovkin is untested is not a valid reason to dislike him or distrust his abilities. He appears to have a plethora of them and appears, too, to have come along at a fine time, one in which the depth of the middleweight division is hopelessly shallow. Golovkin has risen in all minds to no worse than second best in one of our sport’s storied divisions by beating up Matthew Macklin (1-2 in three fights before Golovkin), Nobuhiro Ishida (1-2 in three fights before Golovkin) and Gabriel Rosado (in his middleweight debut).
There is even talk among serious individuals of calling Golovkin’s rampage through Macklin and Ishida and Rosado – three guys Marvelous Marvin Hagler probably could have beaten in a handicap match, one on three, and Bernard Hopkins would have unmanned in one night, stopping Ishida on the undercard, decisioning Rosado in the co-main and inviting a red towel from Macklin’s corner in the main, all while donning a differently ridiculous mask for each – three quarters of enough to be considered 2013’s fighter of the year, if he is able to beat Stevens on Saturday. Golovkin is nearer his 32nd birthday than his 31st, and that may explain this urgency to place his name among boxing’s best, because it certainly has nothing to do with the strength of his opposition or even, to pause for honesty, his supposedly withering power.
Golovkin is technically sound and accurate, his footwork fine but not otherworldly, his defense average, but he is a friendly gent with a telegenic smile and a chance of graduating from the Manny Pacquiao School of English Conversation, with honors, before 2015. For goodness’ sake, though, here for comparison, is whom (Olympic gold medalist) Oscar De La Hoya had fought by the time he was the same age (Olympic silver medalist) Gennady Golovkin is: Genaro Hernandez, James Leija, Julio Cesar Chavez (twice), Pernell Whitaker, Ike Quartey, Felix Trinidad, Shane Mosley (twice), Arturo Gatti, Fernando Vargas and Yory Boy Campas. That is another way of imparting De La Hoya was already a Grammy-nominated, first-ballot hall-of-famer about to begin the silly season of his career at the age Golovkin is yet to fight an opponent who ranks with one of the names above.
Beating Curtis Stevens, which Golovkin is expected to do even in Stevens’ New York City, the collection of boroughs in which the Brooklynite once terrorized a few no-hopers of his own, will do little to elevate future historians’ estimation of GGG, though losing to Stevens, or even getting his chin checked by a guy once chin-checked by Marcos Primera, will cause no small discomfort for a gathering army of Golovkin partisans who describe the savagery of the Kazakhstani’s attack in terms frightful enough to remind readers of Lucas Matthysse – before September.
There is a standard enjoyed by Golovkin that is a wee bit inexplicable, too, in an era that sees every elite athlete tacitly suspected of PED use, as search engines looking to sate inquiries that marry Golovkin’s name with acronyms like VADA or WADA or USADA return nothing substantive. If our concern is with the perilous effects of pharmaceutically enhanced fists slamming against standard-issue craniums, should we not begin with a man widely considered the boogeyman’s boogeyman – or did athletic programs in the former Soviet Union, of which Kazakhstan was a part, eschew performance-enhancing drugs so spectacularly?
Aficionados desperately wish to discover an unknown entity, and be the ones to say they did, a sparring-session ghoul in need of only one chance at yesterday’s paper champion, just one, to set right the injustices that burn aficionados’ stomachs when they lie down at night, and such a beast’s necessary quotient of mysteriousness is aided, not obstructed, by taciturnity or simple incomprehension of what is asked him. Golovkin has all such ingredients in a batch of accomplishments that do not yet merit his name in a sentence with Sergio Martinez’s unless and until Martinez himself puts it there. Or have we learned nothing from the RJJ and Money eras, and what ultimate dissatisfaction comes of awarding hypothetical victories?
One cannot say yet what happens when Golovkin is hurt in a prizefight, though perhaps Saturday will reward our forbearance with a stiff left-hook counter or accidental headbutt, but if Golovkin’s next four opponents come no closer to revealing it than his last four, let us still our tongues about Floyd Mayweather’s handicapping before the muse again makes us sing Gennady Golovkin’s praises.
Bart Barry can be reached at bart.barrys.email (at) gmail.com
