Gennady Gennadyevich Golovkin vs. Sergey Vyacheslavovich Derevyanchenko RBR

Oh, in the midst of all the scoring debate we have lost track of the fact that GGG's major accomplishments tonight were twofold:

1. Another very good scalp to add to his coup belt, even if that long-sought after signature "big one" still eludes him (c'mere, little ginger...stop running and come back to your papi ) and his third prime or near-prime elite or near-elite middleweight opponent battled with on even terms in as many years (and fourth fight of such description in 2017/18/19, starting with Jacobs, then Canelo I & II, and now Derevyanchenko).
2. He finally reached his milestone fortieth professional victory. "Ho-hum", you say? Of the currently active p4p top 100, only a handful of men have 40 wins or more. They are: Canelo, Pacquiao, Wilder (gr, the one bum on the list, exception not disproving the rule ), Estrada, Wangek, GRS, Donaire, Moonsuree/Wanheng. That's all (Mikey G is one away, now sitting at 39 as Triple G was heading in tonight). Not even double-digits. He's among just nine world class boxers that have pushed their W columns into such high atmospheres, in this era where the best rarely make more than one or two annual appearances, nor do they frequently fight the best (almost all of GGG's opposition has been, if nothing else, ranked top 15, in close to a decade. I think off the top of my head only maybe Martirosyan wasn't?)

 

Each fight is its own dynamic, and at this level usually too nuanced to be reducible to such single sentence narratives.