Gennady Golovkin

Gennadiy Gennadyevich Golovkin (Cyrillic: Генна́дий Генна́дьевич Голо́вкин; also spelled Gennady; born 8 April 1982), often known by his nickname "GGG" or "Triple G", is a Kazakhstani professional boxer.

He has held multiple middleweight world championships, and is a two-time former unified champion.

In 1990, the government had informed Golovkin's family that Vadim was dead.

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.

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.

He became a scholarship holder with the Olympic Solidarity program in November 2002.

In his amateur career, Golovkin won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2003 World Championships.

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."

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.

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.

With a streak of 23 knockouts that spanned from 2008 to 2016, he holds the highest knockout-to-win ratio – 88.1% – in middleweight championship history.

Golovkin is also said to have one of the most durable chins in boxing history, having never been knocked down or otherwise stopped in a total of 395 fights, 45 as a professional and 350 as an amateur.

In 2010, Golovkin won the WBA interim middleweight title by defeating Milton Núñez.

The WBA elevated him to Regular champion status in the same year.

He won the IBO title the following year.

He is also a former International Boxing Organization (IBO) middleweight champion, having held the title twice between 2011 and 2023.

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.

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 defeated Marco Antonio Rubio to win WBC interim middleweight title, and defeated David Lemieux for the IBF middleweight title in 2015.

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 was ranked as the world's best boxer, pound for pound, from September 2017 to September 2018 by The Ring magazine.

As of March 2023, he is ranked as the world's fifth best active boxer, pound for pound, by BoxRec.

He is also ranked as the world's best active middleweight by The Ring, Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, ESPN, and BoxRec.

Golovkin lost all his titles, including his undefeated record, following a 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.

A calculating pressure fighter, Golovkin is known for his exceptionally powerful and precise punching, balance, and methodical movement inside the ring.