A Tale of Three Middies: Super-G, The Grandmaster, and GGG

That was such an exciting time, a decade heretofore, when you had three powerful and skillful unbeaten Eastern-European middleweight prospects in the pipeline. It really seemed a crap shoot then as to which of them would be the most successful when the dust had settled. Crazy as it may be to reflect on it now, for a hot minute HBO was super into "Super G", and seemed primed and ready to give the Pole, and not Triple G, the big import push to regular main event status that was eventually bestowed on the Kazakh. Then a random pillow-fisted Aussie named Kerry Hope dealt out maybe the most goggling derailment of a hype train in recent memory.

I always liked the juxtaposition of their boxing educations, too. Not sure how many folks knew or remembered this, but:

• Grzegorz Proksa taught himself. Period. He turned pro under László Veres of Hungary - and respectfully, that guy's pretty damn useless. Just a glorified pad-holder. Proksa had grown up a rabid consumer of whatever American boxing telecasts he could get and copied those styles into a syncretic one all his own (with his own peculiar habits sprinkled in, like the overhand left thrown in "triangular arm" fashion with his elbow pointed at the sky). He did okay with that weird DIY hodgepodge style in the amateurs on the Polish scene, racking up a 117-13 record, good for 90% but with limited domestic opposition. In the pros, he jumped between a succession of mediocre teachers starting with Veres and consequently, never climbed the mountaintop and fulfilled his natural talent's promise.
  
  
• Dmitry Pirog did something rather similar, but with some minor tweaks. An extremely intelligent child, he was far more into chess than boxing (hence the nickname). In fact, boxing remained "merely a hobby" for him, in his own words, all through his amateur campaign which ran twice as long as Proksa's! He went 200-30 (86%) but at higher levels, cutting his teeth on the more challenging Russian scene and dipping his toes in the broader Slavic and European waters. All throughout, he basically was auto-didactic (self-taught) in the sport, and would religiously watch the same handful of VHS tapes of, not just American boxing in general like Proksa, but specifically Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Sugar Ray Leonard, whose imprints and influence on his style are very obvious when you watch him. It wasn't until 9 fights deep into his pro career that he decided "okay, guess I'm a boxer, and will take it seriously" and hired a trainer.
  
  
• Gennady Golovkin was groomed to be a star amateur, in the notoriously strong Kazakh program, and went a legendary 345-8 (97%...used to be widely misreported as 345-5, but still damn impressive with the additional three defeats tacked on). He was routinely getting in fistfights starting in kindergarten (!!) and took up boxing at the age of eight. GGG learned the ropes under savvy Karaganda native Victor Dmitriev and was soon thrust into regional tourneys before having even hit puberty. Needless to say, the guy on this list with the most knowledgeable coaching and most formally structured education in the sport, as well as the most expansive, rigorous and dominant amateur career...lo and behold, achieved the most.