20 little-known facts about Gennady Golovkin

6. Golovkin claimed Canelo’s WBC title in 2016

Boxing’s various sanctioning bodies are generally bastions of corruption. Champions are either saddled with arbitrary mandatory title defenses or given unjust exemptions to avoid certain foes. Favoritism is rampant. Rankings are senseless. But sometimes, these rogue organizations get things right, and the WBC does deserve some credit for belatedly forcing Canelo Alvarez’s hand when Gennady Golovkin was their interim champion.

Golden Boy Promotions and CEO Oscar De La Hoya, however, balked, refusing to make the match that everyone knew needed to happen. While Canelo does deserve a modicum of blame for how the Golovkin fight has marinated, he has shown a solid willingness to face elite opposition throughout his career. That said, Canelo vacating his WBC belt and going on to fight Amir Khan and Liam Smith, allegedly lucrative offer to Golovkin notwithstanding, was horrible optics.

For years, Golovkin has made it his mission to collect all of the middleweight titles – both a noble and futile exercise in boxing’s contemporary landscape. Indeed, Golovkin’s ultimate intention has been to provide total clarity at 160 pounds, but the difficulty of luring fellow middleweight titlists into the ring has created a handful of mandatory defenses that were clearly beneath the Kazakh. Still, Golovkin did luck into the overly brave David Lemieux claiming a belt, and the refusal of fighters like Billy Joe Saunders to face him has only enhanced the mystique surrounding Triple G.

What’s intriguing about this saga with Canelo, though, is that it reinforces the importance of the lineal title to boxing purists. Although the majority of those who seriously follow the sport consider Golovkin superior to Canelo, a stamp of legitimacy is still missing. Sure, the WBA, WBC, IBF and IBO titles matter and are a concrete reflection of Golovkin’s excellence and sustained dominance. But until he beats Canelo and snatches that lineal title, the most essential claim to the middleweight throne will be missing.