BIG BEAR LAKE, Calif. — Gennadiy Golovkin did not become the boxing phenomenon “GGG” on his own.
California-based trainer Abel Sanchez taught the longtime middleweight champion the “Mexican style” of fighting. It was Golovkin’s job, Sanchez demanded, to commit to the purity of daily training by running the snow-driven roads of Big Bear, Calif. and exhausting his tank in grueling gym preparation. Sanchez had his student watch old Julio Cesar Chavez videos to embrace the power of aggression, the popularity of the knockout.
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Managers Oleg and Max Hermann and promoter Tom Loeffler negotiated Golovkin’s fights and financial splits, and he trusted network executives to arrange the most effective dates to promote his skill.
Those influences took GGG from an obscure middleweight champion to a superstar headlining HBO cards and pay-per-views — including two epic showdowns against his bitter rival, Mexico’s Canelo Alvarez. Yet, little by little, the relationships those individuals had with Golovkin began to fade away after Nevada judges awarded Alvarez a narrow majority decision win in the rematch last year.
Sanchez has since been fired. Golovkin, 37, severed ties and engaged in legal proceedings with his managers. He diminished the role of his former lead promoter Loeffler, forming his own GGG Promotions and appointing Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn as the lead promoter for his next fight. He even added an “I” into his first name.
Ahead of Saturday’s bout at Madison Square Garden — a main-event matchup with Sergiy Derevyanchenko for the vacant IBF middleweight belt on DAZN — Golovkin says he’s finally taken control of his future.
“That’s the way I’ve been thinking over the past year: I’m going to do what’s best for my career,” Golovkin, who is now trained by Johnathon Banks, told The Athletic. “At this point, whatever works for me I’m doing. In the past year, I’ve started viewing boxing in a whole different light.”
THERE’S A NEW edge for Golovkin (39-1-1, 35 KOs) that has risen since the changes with his team and his most recent loss to Alvarez. It was during that process that Golovkin repeatedly began to burn over “the business of boxing.”
When Alvarez turned in two positive tests for the banned substance clenbuterol in February 2018, before the rematch, Golovkin made the salacious claim that his rival appeared to have needle marks on his skin before their first fight. He also fumed like never before at what he viewed as corruption from the Nevada Athletic Commission, who ultimately suspended Alvarez, postponing their planned May 2018 bout until September 2018.
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Golovkin was only just starting to put his foot down.
He first insisted to broadcast partner HBO that they not cancel his planned Cinco de Mayo card. And even though the Nevada commission denied now-current WBO junior-middleweight champion Jaime Munguia as an under-qualified opponent, Golovkin dug in and pressed Loeffler to make a fight against outmatched Vanes Martirosyan in Carson, Calif.
The outcome was never in doubt, as Golovkin won by second-round knockout. But he’d set the tone he wanted. He’d be voiceless passenger no more.
So when De La Hoya and his Golden Boy Promotions President Eric Gomez pursued the same terms for the delayed rematch that were in place before the positive tests, Golovkin said no. Now that Alvarez was suspended, a new agreement with a 55-45-percent purse split was in order.
De La Hoya and Gomez set a deadline for Golovkin. Knowing Loeffler had arranged a backup fight for GGG with then-WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders, Golovkin returned to visit family in Kazakhstan. The deadline — touted by both Golden Boy reps on Twitter — came and passed without GGG budging.
De La Hoya and Gomez caved, and ultimately met Golovkin’s price.
Golovkin publicist Fred Sternburg said his fighter insisted Golden Boy “play poker with me.”
“He wanted to control his own destiny and it started with these negotiations,” Sternburg said. “Even though Oscar and Eric goaded and teased him about a deadline, they accepted his terms. That’s when I thought Gennadiy came into his own. Now he’s like, ‘I know what I want to do.’”
After Alvarez won the rematch on the scorecards, the Mexican star cashed in with a $350-million, 10-fight deal with DAZN. Golovkin, meanwhile, hunkered down at his California home and schemed to address all that was irking him. He didn’t fight for nine months.
“I tried to always do the right thing and establish my team as the people who were close to me,” Golovkin explained. “As time passed, these people who’d been around me showed their true colors. The way they treated me, the way they treated the game — I seemed to have just been a tool to them.”
“The way they treated me, the way they treated the game — I seemed to have just been a tool to them.” – Gennadiy Golovkin.
Sanchez, who said he was asked to take a pay cut before being relieved of his duties, painted Golovkin as unappreciative at their parting.
The Hermanns said they felt the same way.
“Greed changes people, and Golovkin is no different,” their attorney wrote in a May cross-complaint seeking in excess of $27 million “The Hermanns are not the only people who were there for Golovkin from the start that he is trying to stiff now that he is earning life-changing sums of money.”
The complaint estimated Golovkin would earn $100 million from DAZN.
Retaining Loeffler even in a lesser role ensures Golovkin has an ally should he need a supportive witness in a potential Hermanns trial, but Loeffler implied that’s not the only reason he’s still around.
“There was speculation (we would part ways), but never from GGG,” Loeffler said. “We built GGG into one of the biggest stars in boxing. We made him one of the biggest free agents in boxing. I’m with him 100 percent. I’ve never had an issue with Gennadiy like the Hermanns and Abel did.”
IN ALIGNING WITH new trainer Banks, Golovkin has a cornerman who formerly coached ex-heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko and who understood an older fighter’s yearning for more control.
“Gennadiy fought his way to this spot (of importance) and can say, ‘If I’m the one taking all the risk, let me take all the risk,’” said Banks, who was mentored in Detroit by the legendary late trainer Emanuel Steward. “A lot of fighters wish they could come to that conclusion. And a lot of fighters come to that conclusion too late. Any fighter who’s worked his ass off to do that, I take my hat off to him.”
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Golovkin himself was deeply involved in talks with ESPN and DAZN as potential broadcast partners after HBO exited the business.
But if Golovkin won the poker game against De La Hoya and Gomez, though, veteran promoter Bob Arum said the fighter “overplayed his hand” by returning to ESPN executives Jimmy Pitaro and Kevin Mayer and asking them to financially sweeten a prior handshake agreement.
Arum, whose Top Rank company has ESPN as its broadcast partner, said in a visit to ESPN offices, Golovkin, his wife and the fighter’s accountant, Melissa Moskal, “started renegotiating, and ESPN got really irritated and literally kicked them out of the office.”
A representative close to Golovkin’s team, when asked about the incident, said: “out of responsibility to all the parties, we’re not going to discuss any of the negotiations we went through.”
A six-fight deal with DAZN was eventually struck, but Golovkin later discovered that Alvarez never signed to fight him on Sept. 14 as believed — although Golden Boy has promised it will deliver the fight to DAZN next year. Alvarez has said he’s not interested in participating in a lucrative trilogy fight against the man who has bashed him so vehemently.
“He has nothing to offer me,” Alvarez told DAZN’s Chris Mannix last month. “I thought I beat him the first time and the second time as well. Why fight him a third time?”
Golovkin only said the word “Canelo” twice in his 45-minute interview with The Athletic.
“I want many things. I wanted a fight on Sept. 14,” Golovkin said. “There was a clause in the contract that we were to fight in September. And the only reason it didn’t happen was because Golden Boy Promotions didn’t agree to the fight. The deal didn’t work out. So what can we talk about now?”
Has DAZN provided any assurance of a future trilogy bout against Alvarez?
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“I haven’t heard anything,” Golovkin said. “And everyone at DAZN knows this topic is not one that interests me, and it’s not something that the spectators are interested in either. The people understand boxing is not about one person.
“This person showed his true colors how he really feels about boxing,” Golovkin added. “He showed his true self. We’ve seen the way he acts in these kinds of situations.”
We’re also seeing how the new Golovkin operates. The man who used to be pleased to engage reporters in a conversation about the landscape of his division or the state of the sport now declines to discuss alternatives to Alvarez, such as fights with WBO middleweight champion Demetrius Andrade, WBC champion Jermall Charlo, Munguia or super-middleweight champion Callum Smith.
“I’m not going to promote anyone else by naming their names. I’m going to do what is good for me,” Golovkin said. “The fact that we’re talking about (those other fighters) now … they’ve been around. I don’t need to suddenly be interested in them. I have to think about what a fight with them would be like? There’s no reason for that. It is what it is.”
Despite his fighter’s cantankerous tone, Banks is pleased with what he’s seen from Golovkin following their debut match, a fourth-round knockout of Steve Rolls in June. But he is quick to point out that Golovkin is “more than just a guy who knocks people out.”
“I strongly believe every major puncher has suffered from blinders over time,” Banks added.“The progress you make as a boxer gets lost when you have major knockout power. You start to rely on it, and think, ‘I can lose three, four rounds, but I still have this (power).’ It’s one thing to go for the knockout and another thing entirely to depend on the knockout. I want him to know he has something in his back pocket.”
Asked about those revelations by Banks, Golovkin responded as if he were in danger of leaking military secrets.
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“I’m not necessarily going back to being an amateur,” Golovkin said. “I am training to end the fight before 12 rounds and knock him out early. That’s the boxing that people like to see. That’s what I’m good at. The goal is to end the fight before 12 rounds.”
That much, Golovkin has determined, can never change.