Gennady Golovkin wins despite lackluster performance

Gennady Golovkin won yet again by knockout, registering his 23rd finish in succession while raising his record to 36-0 when he successfully defended his WBC and IBF middleweight belts by stopping Kell Brook Saturday in the fifth round of their bout in London’s O2 Arena.

But this wasn’t the vintage “Triple G” that boxing fans have fallen in love with and he certainly appeared nowhere near the best fighter in the world. It was hard to imagine him, for instance, doing much, if anything, with Andre Ward, his rival for recognition as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, given how he looked Saturday.

Golovkin’s trademark power was there, as he wobbled Brook early and may have broken Brook’s right orbital bone. Brook’s trainer, Dominic Ingle, threw in the towel in the fifth round of a bout that Brook was surprisingly competitive in.

Golovkin rated his performance “a three or a four” after the bout, while trainer Abel Sanchez gave him a four during a post-fight interview with HBO’s Jim Lampley and Bernard Hopkins.

Golovkin denied rumors that began circulating on Friday that he was sick and said he felt fine, but he looked as if he were sick. He didn’t have anywhere near the same precision that he had in most of his other fights.

“It was not good,” Golovkin said of his performance. “I promised the Big Drama Show.”

It was an entertaining fight for as long as it lasted, both because Brook, the IBF welterweight champion, competed hard and wasn’t intimidated, and because Golovkin was off his game enough to let Brook into it.

In the second round, Brook hit Golovkin with a good five-punch combination, snapping the middleweight champion’s head back with a left uppercut.

Golovkin’s power was too much, though, and he was largely able to walk through what Brook threw at him.

“Kell is a good fighter, but he’s not a middleweight,” Golovkin said. “I promised a big drama show, but that was not boxing; it was like a street fight.”

This, at least temporarily, will put the brakes on the Golovkin hype train. He showed enough vulnerability that it is now no sure thing he runs through the rest of the field at middleweight.

“He was trying too hard to knock Kell out,” Sanchez said. ” … I was trying to tell him it was a 12-round fight.”

Brook said he had double vision, but still wasn’t pleased with Ingle’s decision to stop the fight. He said “I wanted to carry on. [Let him] knock me out.”

Golovkin blew it in the post-fight interview with HBO as well. When asked who he wanted to fight next, he mentioned WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. Saunders is a low-profile opponent who wouldn’t resonate well with the crowd in the U.S.

It was a chance for him yet again to put the pressure on rival Canelo Alvarez, who declined to fight Golovkin and instead is fighting Liam Smith on Sept. 17. But Golovkin mentioned Saunders instead of calling out Alvarez, so there will be less input for Alvarez and promoter Oscar De La Hoya to push up their timeline.

A fighter has to be extremely good to win by fifth-round knockout and have it be a disappointing performance.

That, though, is what happened to Golovkin on Saturday. He showed a few chinks in the armor and it’s not quite as hard envisioning him lose after the Brook fight as it was beforehand.