WBA Super World middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin spoke on Thursday with Behind the Gloves’s Michelle Joy Phelps ahead of his first pay-per-view event scheduled to take place on Oct. 17 from the Madison Square Garden – the Mecca of Boxing – on HBO Pay-Per-View.
Golovkin (33-0, 30 KO’s) will take on the hard-hitting Canadian David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KO’s).
Golovkin has knocked out or stopped his past 20 opponents and holds a 91 percent knockout percentage rate. Lemieux can’t hold a candle to having that many knockouts in a row, as he has been stopped himself by Marco Antonio Rubio, but his 86 percent knockout percentage rate is right up there with the champ.
However, Golovkin still admits that he’s a little scared about the upcoming fight.
“I know my job is very short and this is a very big job,” he told Phelps.
“It’s very exciting, amazing for me…and scary!
“I’m a little scared. I am a regular guy; I’m not a crazy guy – maybe one percent – because I understand my situation. I understand this is a sport, not a game.
“I am scared. Why not?”
Some in the boxing world would understandably hate on Golovkin for making such a comment because they don’t understand the sport from an athlete’s perspective.
Every combat athlete feels fear, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he/she thinks they are going to lose. For example, legendary heavyweight champion George Foreman once said this about the late Joe Frazier.
“I was afraid of Joe Frazier. For the first time entering into the ring in a fight, I was afraid of a guy.”
Foreman went on to knockdown Frazier six times before referee Arthur Mercante Sr. finally had seen enough in the second round.
At the time, Frazier was a hot commodity following an upset victory over Muhammad Ali, followed by two back-to-back stoppages of Terry Daniels and Ron Stander.
Foreman went on to fight Frazier again in 1976, winning via fifth-round TKO.
We shouldn’t fault Golovkin for saying he’s a little scared. Instead, we should give him credit for being honest.
In the 2013 film The Last Stand starring Arnold Schwarzenegger his character, a veteran Sheriff, had a conversation with his female deputy (Jaimie Alexander) leading up to a deadly shootout towards the end of the film.
“Ray [Schwarzenegger] I got to tell you when Jerry and I were being shot at, I was scared (expletive). I could barely keep my hands from shaking,” said the Deputy.
“That’s quite normal. Everyone feels like that during a firefight,” The Sheriff replied. “I’ll tell you a secret. I’m probably more afraid than you are right now.”
“How can that be?” the Deputy questioned.
“Because I have seen enough blood and death. I know what’s coming.”
Golovkin will KO David Lemieux.
