Gennady Golovkin

Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin (Cyrillic: Генна́дий Генна́дьевич Голо́вкин; also spelled Gennadiy; born 8 April 1982), often known by his nickname "GGG" or "Triple G", is a Kazakhstani former professional boxer who competed from 2006 to 2022. He has held multiple middleweight world championships, and is a two-time former unified champion. He held the World Boxing Association (WBA) (Super version), World Boxing Council (WBC) and International Boxing Federation (IBF) titles at varying points between 2014 and 2023, and challenged once for the undisputed super middleweight championship in 2022. He is also a former International Boxing Organization (IBO) middleweight champion, having held the title twice between 2011 and 2023. Golovkin was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2026.

Golovkin was ranked as the world's best boxer, pound for pound, from September 2017 to September 2018 by The Ring magazine. He was also ranked as the world's best active middleweight by The Ring, Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, ESPN, and BoxRec. His 20 consecutive middleweight title defenses are tied with Bernard Hopkins for the most in the division's history.

In 2010, Golovkin won the WBA interim middleweight title by defeating Milton Núñez. WBA later elevated him to Regular champion status in 2012. He won the IBO title the following year. In 2014, Golovkin was elevated to the status of WBA (Super) champion and successfully defended both his titles against Daniel Geale. Later that year he would go on to defeat Marco Antonio Rubio to win the WBC interim middleweight title, and in 2015 he would defeat David Lemieux for the IBF middleweight title. After Canelo Álvarez vacated his WBC middleweight title in 2016, Golovkin was elevated to full champion and held three of the four major world titles in boxing. Golovkin lost all his titles, including his undefeated record, following his first loss to Álvarez in 2018. He regained his IBF and IBO titles by defeating Sergiy Derevyanchenko in 2019, and regained his WBA (Super) title by defeating Ryōta Murata in 2022 at age 40.

In his amateur career, Golovkin won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2003 World Championships. He went on to represent Kazakhstan at the 2004 Summer Olympics, winning a middleweight silver medal. Golovkin was appointed President of the National Olympic Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2024. He was appointed president of the World Boxing in 2025 after he played a key role in keeping Olympic boxing.

Early life

Golovkin was born in the city of Karaganda in the Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union (present-day Kazakhstan) to a Russian coal miner father and an ethnic Korean mother, who worked as an assistant in a chemical laboratory. Golovkin's maternal grandfather, Sergey Pak, was an ethnic Korean living in Soviet Russia, who was forcefully moved to Kazakhstan.

He has three brothers, two elder named Sergey and Vadim and a twin, Max. Sergey and Vadim had encouraged Golovkin to start boxing when Golovkin was eight years old. As a youth, Golovkin would walk the streets with them, who went around picking fights for him with grown men. When asked, "Are you afraid of him?", Golovkin would respond "No", and be told to fight. "My brothers, they were doing that from when I was in kindergarten," Golovkin said. "Every day, different guys." When Golovkin was nine years old, Golovkin's two older brothers joined the Soviet Army. In 1990, the government had informed Golovkin's family that Vadim was dead. In 1994, the government told Golovkin's family that Sergey was dead.

Golovkin's first boxing gym was in Maikuduk, Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where his first boxing coach was Victor Dmitriev, whom he regards as "very good". A month after he first entered the gym, at age 10, the trainer ordered him to step into the ring to check his skills and he lost his first fight.

Amateur career

Golovkin began boxing competitively in 1993, age 11, winning the local Karaganda Regional tournament in the cadet division. It took several years before he was allowed to compete against seniors, and seven years before he was accepted to the Kazakhstani national boxing team, and began competing internationally. In the meantime he graduated from the Karagandy State University Athletics and Sports Department, receiving a degree and a PE teacher qualification. He became a scholarship holder with the Olympic Solidarity program in November 2002.

At the 2003 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Bangkok, he won the gold medal beating future two-time champion Matvey Korobov (RUS) 19–10, Andy Lee (29–9), Lucian Bute (stoppage), Yordanis Despaigne in the semi-finals (29–26) and Oleg Mashkin in the finals. Upon his victory at the 2003 Championships, a boxing commentator calling the bout for NTV Plus Sports, said: "Golovkin. Remember that name! We sure will hear it again."

Professional career

Early career

After ending his amateur career in 2005, Golovkin signed with the Universum Box-Promotion (UBP) and made his professional debut in May 2006 his first professional trainer was the German Tajik Magomed Schaburow a former amateur boxer. By the end of 2008, Golovkin's record stood at 14–0 (11 KO) and while he had few wins over boxers regarded as legitimate contenders, he was regarded as one of the best prospects in the world. Golovkin was given 4 more relatively easy bouts in 2009. In 2010, Universum started to run into financial issues after having been dropped by German television channel ZDF. This caused a number of issues for Golovkin who was effectively unable to fight in Germany, and contract disputes between the two parties got complicated.

Golovkin terminated his contract with Universum in January 2010 and stated the following in an interview: "The reason for this decision is that I've always been placed behind Felix Sturm and Sebastian Zbik by Universum. Our demands to fight against Felix Sturm or Sebastian Zbik have been always rejected on absurd grounds. Universum had no real plan or concept for me, they did not even try to bring my career forward. They would rather try to prevent me from winning a title as long as Sturm and Zbik are champions. Further more, bouts against well-known and interesting opponents were held out in prospect, but nothing happened. This situation was not acceptable. It was time to move forward."

After cutting ties with Universum, the WBA issued an interim title fight between Golovkin, ranked #1 at the time, and Milton Núñez (21–1–1, 19 KOs), who was ranked 13th at the time by the WBA. Golovkin routed Núñez, defeating him in 58 seconds to win the interim title. He tried to fight WBA (Super) champion Felix Sturm and Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam during this time, but was unable to get them in the ring. Oleg Hermann, Golovkin's manager, said "It is very hard to find a good opponent. Everybody knows that Felix Sturm is afraid of Gennady. Strictly speaking, Sturm should get out of boxing and become a marathon runner because he is running fast and long. He has an excellent chance to become a champion in athletics."

Fighting in the United States

Golovkin was determined to become a worldwide name, dreaming of following in the Klitschko brothers' footsteps by fighting in Madison Square Garden and Staples Center. He signed with K2 Promotions and went into training in Big Bear, California, with Abel Sanchez, the veteran trainer behind Hall of Famer Terry Norris and many other top talents. At first, Sanchez was misled by Golovkin's humble appearance: "I looked at him, I thought: 'Man! This guy is a choir boy!'." But soon he was stunned by and impressed with Golovkin's talent and attitude from their first meeting. He has since then worked to add Mexican-style aggression to Golovkin's Eastern European-style amateur discipline, thereby producing a formidable hybrid champion. "I have a chalkboard in the gym, and I wrote Ali's name, Manny Pacquiao's name and his name," Sanchez said. "I told him, 'You could be right there.' He was all sheepish, but once I felt his hands, and I saw how smart he was in the ring and how he caught on... sheesh. He's going to be the most-avoided fighter in boxing, or he's going to get the chance he deserves."

Golovkin was scheduled to make his HBO debut against Dmitry Pirog (20–0, 15 KOs) in August 2012. Pirog had vacated his WBO middleweight title to face Golovkin. This was because Pirog had been mandated to fight interim champion Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam. Weeks before the fight, it was announced that Pirog had suffered a back injury—a ruptured disc—that would prevent him from fighting on the scheduled date, but Golovkin would still face another opponent on HBO. Several comeback attempts by Pirog were thwarted by ongoing back problems, effectively forcing his premature retirement.