By Cliff Rold
March 31, 2022
Source: Boxing Scene
Photo Source: Boxing Scene
In a little more than a week, one of boxing’s most dominant forces over the last decade and change will return to the ring for the first time since 2020.
On a busy April 9th for the sport, IBF middleweight titlist Gennadiy Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KO) will attempt the second defense of the vacant belt he won against Sergiy Derevyanchenko in 2019. That defense will come in a rescheduled unification bout in Japan against WBA middleweight titlist Ryota Murata (16-2, 13 KO). Estimates tab it as one of the richest fights in the world in 2022, though its impact outside Japan might not feel that way.
On paper, it’s a solid fight with pedigree. Kazakhstan’s Golovkin was a 2003 world amateur champion and Silver Medalist at the 2004 Olympics before a lengthy run as WBA middleweight titlist that saw him add the WBC and IBF belts along the way. Murata was a Gold Medalist for Japan at the 2012 Games and has avenged the only undisputed loss of his career to Rob Brant. It’s also a fight between men who have probably already seen their best days. Murata, while lacking in a high volume of professional starts, is already 36. Golovkin will turn forty the day before the fight. This is Golovkin in his twilight.
Despite that, Golovkin will be the favorite. Assuming he meets expectations, Golovkin-Murata is less about the fight itself and more about what it could tell us about the rest of the year. The plan is already well known. If he wins, Golovkin’s next date is already penciled in. Golovkin is fighting to get to chapter three.
There is other business to finish before chapter three can be certain. Undisputed super middleweight champion Saul Alvarez (57-1-2, 39 KO) is slated to face WBA light heavyweight titlist Dmitry Bivol (19-0, 11 KO) before he can get to a third clash with Golovkin. Bivol is a capable, talented fighter. Alvarez will be favored but a loss is possible. Even in defeat, Alvarez would remain super middleweight champion so in theory the Bivol outcome wouldn’t necessarily change the current destination. It’s a bridge we haven’t arrived at yet.
It likely all goes away if Golovkin doesn’t win on April 9th. If it goes away, the chance for closure goes with it and it’s hard not to think closure matters for Golovkin.
He should already have it.
A large part of the Golovkin mythology that built up as he posted a knockout streak that lasted more than eight years was about what he wasn’t getting. Despite hollow rhetoric about being willing to move around the scale, Golovkin stayed at middleweight in pursuit of the big fight there. Names like Felix Sturm, Sergio Martinez, and Miguel Cotto made other fights.
Golovkin looked like the best middleweight in the world for years. He beat everyone else of note. It might not have been a historically notable middleweight field but he flattened it in memorable fashion for years. Golovkin was denied his crack at history’s title until the first clash with Alvarez. Most thought he won. One judge narrowly agreed, one saw it as even, and one (Adalaide Byrd) turned in what many saw as a horrific scorecard in favor of Alvarez that cast a pall over the fight that remains to this day.
The rematch was different. Alvarez won and while it could be debated it didn’t carry the stench of the first outcome. In an objectively close fight, all of the judges were within a couple points of each other. Had the first fight had three acceptable scorecards, the loss in the rematch would probably have stung less.
Golovkin put all his eggs in the middleweight basket and didn’t get what he was looking for. Ironically, it will finally be a move up the scale that could give him a chance to write a different final chapter. A fighter defined by fights that didn’t happen and a decision that got away hasn’t done much since the second Alvarez fight.
The Derevyanchenko fight was a nailbiter. Steve Rolls and Kamil Szeremata were out of their league. That’s it for the last three and a half years, leaving Golovkin’s presence in the game more theory than practice.
That all changes when action commences with Murata. Golovkin will be back, will have a purpose again, and will have an opportunity to slay the one dragon that has eluded him. He won’t ever get back the verdicts in the first two Alvarez fights but, with time slipping away, he can at least know his fate is in his hands one more time.
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