Gennady “GGG” Golovkin brought his famous Mexican style aggressive boxing approach to the ring on Cinco de Mayo at the StubHub Center in California with a devastating 2nd round knockout of late replacement Vanes Martirosyan.
After being denied a 20 million payday against Canelo Alvarez due to the Mexican fighters failed drug test and 6 month suspension, GGG refused to be inactive and decided to go on with the May 5th date and the only one brave enough to step up was junior middleweight contender Vanes Martirosyan.
The fight started with both fighters finding their range. Vanes had a confidence building moment scoring a good punch that seemed to slightly hurt the undefeated middleweight champion, it was more of a feeling out round for both but the punch by Vanes gave him credibility in the fight.
The second round started off with Golovkin more aggressive, and landing his jab more often, Vanes tried to attack but his punches were not doing any harm, the more he moved back the more aggressive GGG would get.
Toward the middle of round two, Golovkin was able to back Vanes up on the ropes by landing a clean right hand uppercut that hurt him and sent him staggering back covering up on the ropes, GGG threw a jab and a combo that hurt Vanes sending him to the canvas.
Vanes was lying on the canvas face down in pain, he started getting up as the referee was counting but he couldn’t beat the ten count and it was called a knockout at 1:53 of the second round.
Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) remains undefeated adding another knockout to his already impressive list of KOs. Tonight’s impressive performance showed GGG means business, and losing the Canelo rematch motivated him more to take out his frustration on Vanes.
It was also a history making moment for the WBA, WBC, IBF middleweight champion, he has now tied Bernard Hopkin for most title defenses in the middleweight division with 20.
In the post-fight interview GGG thanked the Mexican fans, and his countryman of Kazakhstan, he said he will fight Canelo on Mexican Independence day weekend in September after his suspension and will take on anyone else in the division.
