GGG turned 40 in Japan Which Wasn’t His Land of the Setting Sun

Published

3 years ago

April 9, 2022

GGG turned 40 in Japan Which Wasn’t His Land of the Setting Sun

It is axiomatic in boxing that the last positive attribute an aging fighter loses is power, if indeed he is fortunate enough to ever have had much of it in the first place. George Foreman, who ascended to the heavyweight championship of the world a second time — at the unlikely age of 45 — with his 10^th-round knockout of Michael Moorer on Nov. 5, 1994, is perhaps the foremost example of that hoary truism. Big George was and is adamant in his belief that big hitters such as he steadfastly hang onto that gift when other parts of their repertoire have grudgingly surrendered to the relentless march of time.

“I think it’s just something you’re born with, I really do,” Foreman once said of himself and fellow knockout artists who are dangerous even in the late stages of fights they are clearly losing on points, as he was against Moorer. “If you have it, a trainer can develop it and exploit it. The worst thing in the world is to have it and not have a trainer to explain to you what you have.”

One of Foreman’s more memorable utterances when he began his comeback after a 10-year absence from the ring wars was that “40 isn’t necessarily a death sentence” for a fighter, and especially so if he packs enough pop in his punch. And it must be true, if birthday boy Gennadiy “GGG” Golovkin, who turned the big Four-0 on Friday, the day before he was to swap punches with Ryota Murata in their middleweight unification showdown in Saitama, Japan, is still a prime example of what can happen when someone with superior firepower begins finding his target with percussive regularity.

Golovkin looked, if not exactly well past his prime, to be at least somewhat vulnerable through the first four or five rounds against Japan’s hugely popular Murata in the fight that was seen in the United States through the streaming service DAZN. Murata, a 5-1 underdog who came in as the WBA 160-pound titlist, got the better of his share of exchanges as Golovkin, the IBF champ from Kazakhstan, struggled to establish some sort of familiar rhythm. Perhaps visions of boxing’s most stunning upset, when Buster Douglas knocked out the seemingly invincible Mike Tyson on Feb. 11, 1990, in Tokyo, had even begun to float about the Saitama Super Arena, a possibility GGG had alluded to in the lead-up to the bout.

“Japan is the land of surprises, at least when it comes to boxing,” he noted. “I remember what happened in the Tyson-Douglas fight. It has been in the back of my mind throughout training camp. I already had a lot of respect for Ryota Murata, but Tyson-Douglas is a reminder to never give less than 110% every day in training camp.”

But on this Friday night – well, actually it was early Saturday morning in the U.S., due to the 11-hour time difference between EDT and Saitama – Murata (16-3, 13 KOs) was not able to continue to channel his inner Buster, nor was Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) anywhere near-ready to be taken down in the manner that Tyson had been starched in his second visit to the Land of the Rising Sun. The starkly apparent turning point came in the sixth round, when Golovkin connected with a looping right hand to the jaw, which had the effect of sending Murata’s mouthpiece sailing through the air as if it had been cleared for takeoff.

What followed thereafter, interspersed with Murata’s increasingly futile bids to re-gather momentum, were glimpses of the Golovkin who not so very long ago strung together 23 consecutive victories inside the distance, 18 of which came in world title bouts. Most of those fights ended with his opponents twitching on the canvas as if they had just been slammed into by a speeding tractor-trailer.

For those who like to dabble in numbers, CompuBox punch statistics revealed that Golovkin had connected on 257 of 629 overall, 40.9%, to 144 of 592 (24.3%) for Murata. More tellingly, as is usually the case for GGG bouts, the master blaster nailed his opponent with 150 of 321 power shots, an impressive 46.7%, to 122 of 359 (34.0%) for the well-battered Murata, whose corner threw in the towel after their guy went down and in clear distress in round nine.

Former WBO junior welterweight champion Chris Algieri, commenting for DAZN, said the Golovkin seen after Murata’s mouthpiece had gone airborne “looked like the Golovkin of old, not an old Golovkin.” And if that description isn’t entirely accurate, it was close enough against a very good fighter if not one up to the exalted standards of Canelo Alvarez, widely recognized as the planet’s top pound-for-pound practitioner of the pugilistic arts. Alvarez, against whom GGG is 0-1-1 (more than a few knowledgeable observers believed GGG deserved the nod in their first fight, which ended in a draw), is tentatively set to face him for a third time later this year, provided the Mexican superstar (57-1-2, 39 KOs) successfully gets past his May 7 date with WBA light heavyweight ruler Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11 KOs).

It says much about Golovkin’s fearsome reputation as a lights-out puncher that Jim Lampley, the veteran blow-by-blow commentator for HBO when that premium-cable outlet was doing boxing, cites GGG as the most impressively indelible power source that he witnessed while calling fights, even more so than Foreman, Tyson, Wladimir Klitschko, Tommy Hearns, Julian Jackson or anyone else.

“Gennadiy Golovkin was the most consistently hard puncher, and it’s almost a cliché that you’re going to choose somebody from the heavyweight division, but I think it’s more interesting when somebody has consistent punching power over the course of a long career in a weight class the way Gennadiy did,” Lampley told writer Joseph Santoliquito for a story in which he lists the top performers he has covered from ringside. (Lampley says the fighter atop his overall list is Sugar Ray Leonard, with Pernell Whitaker having the best defense and Bernard Hopkins the most underrated.) “The fact he weighed in hundreds of times as an amateur and a professional at the same weight, 160 pounds, makes the retention of his punching power exciting, not to mention some of the cartoon-style knockouts he produced.”

Is Golovkin, at 40, a lesser version of himself than the middleweight wrecking machine of our memories? Maybe, at least a little. Father Time remains the one opponent no fighter can duck and dodge forever, and the calendar surely must win some rounds against those who are obliged to stay on the shelf for longer periods than they might prefer. COVID-19 is a thief that has stolen bits and pieces of fighters young and old since 2020, and the pandemic was responsible for two postponements of Golovkin-Murata until fight night finally arrived. It is reasonable to assume that GGG, who has had only two bouts since his closer-than-expected points nod over Sergiy Derevyanchenko on Oct. 5, 2019, stepped inside the ropes with a thin coating of ring rust, and Murata figured to be even more off his peak form, not having fought at all in 2020 or 2021 while waiting for the global health crisis to abate.

Unless another of those pesky variants of the virus that lingers like an unwelcome house guest suddenly appears, Alvarez-Golovkin III is likely to happen before the end of 2022, the year that boxing has gloriously stepped back into the spotlight. Even if GGG’s total skill set needs a bit more polishing in the months ahead, fight fans are secure in the knowledge that he still has enough of that great equalizer, dynamite fists, to continue to be the kind of attraction that should not be missed.

Bernard Fernandez, named to the International Boxing Hall of Fame in the Observer category with the Class of 2020, was the recipient of numerous awards for writing excellence during his 28-year career as a sports writer for the Philadelphia Daily News. Fernandez’s first book, “Championship Rounds,” a compendium of previously published material, was released in May of last year. The sequel, “Championship Rounds, Round 2,” with a foreword by Jim Lampley, is currently out. The anthology can be ordered through Amazon.com and other book-selling websites and outlets.

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Avila Perspective, Chap. 322: Super Welter Week in SoCal

Published

15 hours ago

April 18, 2025

David A. Avila

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Two below-the-radar super welterweight stars show off their skills this weekend from different parts of Southern California.

One in particular, Charles Conwell, co-headlines a show in Oceanside against a hard-hitting Mexican while another super welter star Sadriddin Akhmedov faces another Mexican hitter in Commerce.

Take your pick.

The super welterweight division is loaded with talent at the moment. If Terence Crawford remained in the division he would be at the top of the class, but he is moving up several weight divisions.

Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) faces Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs) a tall knockout puncher from Los Mochis at the Frontwave Arena in Oceanside, Calif. on Saturday April 19. DAZN will stream the Golden Boy Promotions card that also features undisputed flyweight champion Gabriela Fundora. We’ll get to her later.

Conwell might be the best super welterweight out there aside from the big dogs like Vergil Ortiz, Serhii Bohachuk and Sebastian Fundora.

If you are not familiar with Conwell he comes from Cleveland, Ohio and is one of those fighters that other fighters know about. He is good.

He has the James “Lights Out” Toney kind of in-your-face-style where he anchors down and slowly deciphers the opponent’s tools and then takes them away piece by piece. Usually it’s systematic destruction. The kind you see when a skyscraper goes down floor by floor until it’s smoking rubble.

During the Covid days Conwell fought two highly touted undefeated super welters in Wendy Toussaint and Madiyar Ashkeyev. He stopped them both and suddenly was the boogie man of the super welterweight division.

Conwell will be facing Mexico’s taller Garcia who likes to trade blows as most Mexican fighters prefer, especially those from Sinaloa. These guys will be firing H bombs early.

Fundora

Co-headlining the Golden Boy card is Gabriela Fundora (15-0, 7 KOs) the undisputed flyweight champion of the world. She has all the belts and Mexico’s Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1, 3 KOs) wants them.

Gabriela Fundora is the sister of Sebastian Fundora who holds the men’s WBC and WBO super welterweight world titles. Both are tall southpaws with power in each hand to protect the belts they accumulated.

Six months ago, Fundora met Argentina’s Gabriela Alaniz in Las Vegas to determine the undisputed flyweight champion. The much shorter Alaniz tried valiantly to scrap with Fundora and ran into a couple of rocket left hands.

Mexico’s Badillo is an undefeated flyweight from Mexico City who has battled against fellow Mexicans for years. She has fought one world champion in Asley Gonzalez the current super flyweight world titlist. They met years ago with Badillo coming out on top.

Does Badillo have the skill to deal with the taller and hard-hitting Fundora?

When a fighter has a six-inch height advantage like Fundora, it is almost impossible to out-maneuver especially in two-minute rounds. Ask Alaniz who was nearly decapitated when she tried.

This will be Badillo’s first pro fight outside of Mexico.

Commerce Casino

Kazakhstan’s Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0, 13 KOs) is another dangerous punching super welterweight headlining a 360 Promotions card against Mexico’s Elias Espadas (23-6, 16 KOs) on Saturday at the Commerce Casino.

UFC Fight Pass will stream the 360 Promotions card of about eight bouts.

Akhmedov is another Kazakh puncher similar to the great Gennady “GGG” Golovkin who terrorized the middleweight division for a decade. He doesn’t have the same polish or dexterity but doesn’t lack pure punching power.

It’s another test for the super welterweight who is looking to move up the ladder in the very crowded 154-pound weight division. 360 Promotions already has a top contender in Ukraine’s Serhii Bohachuk who nearly defeated Vergil Ortiz a year ago.

Could Bohachuk and Akhmedov fight each other if nothing else materializes?

That’s a question for another day.

Fights to Watch

Sat. DAZN 5 p.m. Charles Conwell (21-0, 16 KOs) vs. Jorge Garcia Perez (32-4, 26 KOs); Gabriela Fundora (15-0) vs Marilyn Badillo (19-0-1).

Sat. UFC Fight Pass 6 p.m. Sadriddin Akhmedov (15-0) vs Elias Espadas (23-6).

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TSS Salutes Thomas Hauser and his Bernie Award Cohorts

Published

3 days ago

April 16, 2025

TSS Press

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The Boxing Writers Association of America has announced the winners of its annual Bernie Awards competition. The awards, named in honor of former five-time BWAA president and frequent TSS contributor Bernard Fernandez, recognize outstanding writing in six categories as represented by stories published the previous year.

Over the years, this venerable website has produced a host of Bernie Award winners. In 2024, Thomas Hauser kept the tradition alive. A story by Hauser that appeared in these pages finished first in the category “Boxing News Story.” Titled “Ryan Garcia and the New York State Athletic Commission,” the story was published on June 23. You can read it HERE.

Hauser also finished first in the category of “Investigative Reporting” for “The Death of Ardi Ndembo,” a story that ran in the (London) Guardian. (Note: Hauser has owned this category. This is his 11^th first place finish for “Investigative Reporting”.)

Thomas Hauser, who entered the International Boxing Hall of Fame with the class of 2019, was honored at last year’s BWAA awards dinner with the A.J. Leibling Award for Outstanding Boxing Writing. The list of previous winners includes such noted authors as W.C. Heinz, Budd Schulberg, Pete Hamill, and George Plimpton, to name just a few.

The Leibling Award is now issued intermittently. The most recent honorees prior to Hauser were Joyce Carol Oates (2015) and Randy Roberts (2019).

Roberts, a Distinguished Professor of History at Purdue University, was tabbed to write the Hauser/Leibling Award story for the glossy magazine for BWAA members published in conjunction with the organization’s annual banquet. Regarding Hauser’s most well-known book, his Muhammad Ali biography, Roberts wrote, “It is nearly impossible to overestimate the importance of the book to our understanding of Ali and his times.” An earlier book by Hauser, “The Black Lights: Inside the World of Professional Boxing,” garnered this accolade: “Anyone who wants to understand boxing today should begin by reading ‘The Black Lights’.”

A panel of six judges determined the Bernie Award winners for stories published in 2024. The stories they evaluated were stripped of their bylines and other identifying marks including the publication or website for which the story was written.

Other winners:

Boxing Event Coverage: Tris Dixon

Boxing Column: Kieran Mulvaney

Boxing Feature (Over 1,500 Words): Lance Pugmire

Boxing Feature (Under 1,500 Words): Chris Mannix

The Dixon, Mulvaney, and Pugmire stories appeared in Boxing Scene; the Mannix story in Sports Illustrated.

The Bernie Award recipients will be honored at the forthcoming BWAA dinner on April 30 at the Edison Ballroom in the heart of Times Square. (For more information, visit the BWAA website). Two days after the dinner, an historic boxing tripleheader will be held in Times Square, the logistics of which should be quite interesting. Ryan Garcia, Devin Haney, and Teofimo Lopez share top billing.

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Mekhrubon Sanginov, whose Heroism Nearly Proved Fatal, Returns on Saturday

Published

4 days ago

April 15, 2025

Arne K. Lang

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To say that Mekhrubon Sanginov is excited to resume his boxing career would be a great understatement. Sanginov, ranked #9 by the WBA at 154 pounds before his hiatus, last fought on July 8, 2022.

He was in great form before his extended leave, having scored four straight fast knockouts, advancing his record to 13-0-1. Had he remained in Las Vegas, where he had settled after his fifth pro fight, his career may have continued on an upward trajectory, but a trip to his hometown of Dushanbe, Tajikistan, turned everything haywire. A run-in with a knife-wielding bully nearly cost him his life, stalling his career for nearly three full years.

Sanginov was exiting a restaurant in Dushanbe when he saw a man, plainly intoxicated, harassing another man, an innocent bystander. Mekhrubon intervened and was stabbed several times with a long knife. One of the puncture wounds came perilously close to puncturing his heart.

“After he stabbed me, I ran after him and hit him and caught him to hold for the police,” recollects Sanginov. “There was a lot of confusion when the police arrived. At first, the police were not certain what had happened.

“By the time I got to the hospital, I had lost two liters of blood, or so I was told. After I was patched up, one of the surgeons said to me, ‘Give thanks to God because he gave you a second life.’ It is like I was born a second time.”

“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. It could have happened in any city,” he adds. (A story about the incident on another boxing site elicited this comment from a reader: “Good man right there. World would be a better place if more folk were willing to step up when it counts.”)

Sanginov first laced on a pair of gloves at age 10 and was purportedly 105-14 as an amateur. Growing up, the boxer he most admired was Roberto Duran. “Muhammad Ali will always be the greatest and [Marvin] Hagler was great too, but Duran was always my favorite,” he says.

During his absence from the ring, Sanginov married a girl from Tajikistan and became a father. His son Makhmud was born in Las Vegas and has dual citizenship. “Ideally,” he says, “I would like to have three more children. Two more boys and the last one a daughter.”

He also put on a great deal of weight. When he returned to the gym, his trainer Bones Adams was looking at a cruiserweight. But gradually the weight came off – “I had to give up one of my hobbies; I love to eat,” he says – and he will be resuming his career at 154. “Although I am the same weight as before, I feel stronger now. Before I was more of a boy, now I am a full-grown man,” says Sanginov who turned 29 in February.

He has a lot of rust to shed. Because of all those early knockouts, he has answered the bell for only eight rounds in the last four years. Concordantly, his comeback fight on Saturday could be described as a soft re-awakening. Sanginov’s opponent Mahonri Montes, an 18-year pro from Mexico, has a decent record (36-10-2, 25 KOs) but has been relatively inactive and is only 1-3-1 in his last five. Their match at Thunder Studios in Long Beach, California, is slated for eight rounds.

On May 10, Ardreal Holmes (17-0) faces Erickson Lubin (26-2) on a ProBox card in Kissimmee, Florida. It’s an IBF super welterweight title eliminator, meaning that the winner (in theory) will proceed directly to a world title fight.

Sanginov will be watching closely. He and Holmes were scheduled to meet in March of 2022 in the main event of a ShoBox card on Showtime. That match fell out when Sanginov suffered an ankle injury in sparring.

If not for a twist of fate, that may have been Mekhrubon Sanginov in that IBF eliminator, rather than Ardreal Holmes. We will never know, but one thing we do know is that Mekhrubon’s world title aspirations were too strong to be ruined by a knife-wielding bully.

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