Gennady "GGG" Golovkin: setting the record straight on several matters.

Make an issue of what? The fact that he is neither Muslim nor ethnically Kazakh? Golovkin has been incorrectly reported as both. The purpose of making a thread in the first place was to "set the record straight" on various matters relating to Golovkin.

His demographics are one area where there is a lot of misconception and misinformation floating around.

I don't exactly see what your problem is?

What? You're reading a lot into a pronoun. Maybe unwrap the aluminum foil on your dome and lay some cookies on it, pop 'em in the oven, make yourself a nice cup of chamomile...just relax.

I didn't say that. I said in Karaganda Province the demographics are ~50% Russian (either atheists or Christian Orthodox) and only ~30% Kazakh (the ethnic group that is likeliest in the country to be Muslim).

I was stressing that while he may live in a country with an Islamic majority (upon which many lazily base their assumptions that he is a Muslim himself), the region in which he grew up has never in his lifetime had an Islamic or even an ethnic Kazakh majority. In other words, had the people going around slapping his name on lists of Muslim boxers willy-nilly bothered with the slightest modicum of research - even metadata about his province, let alone digging up his personal biographical information as they ought to have done before labeling him something he isn't, they'd know that his statistical chances of being a Muslim drop from "most probably" for Kazakhstanis on average to "probably not" on average in his specific province.

I never said total isolation, just that he was raised in a predominantly Muslim country but not a predominantly Muslim community that happens to exist within that country.

Which is why it got the least amount of attention of my four original key bullet points. His demographics constituted a fifth of my original post (254 words, against 1,243 in the entirety) even though it was ¼ of my subject matter. Clearly I wasn't stressing it as the biggest deal - so why are you?

If there weren't misconceptions about Golovkin being a Muslim or having deep family roots in Kazakhstan (neither of which is true) it wouldn't have warranted mentioning.

Were people going around calling him a converted southpaw (he isn't), that would merit correcting as well.

If rumors were circulating that he is a gay and that he married Abel Sanchez in a private ceremony in Vermont, well, I'd debunk that as well.

A significant # of people (outside castefootball anyway :yep) speculating that he is "half Chinese or something" would be grounds for clarification.

Yes, he is. Or rather, was. He converted to Nation of Islam while imprisoned and later in life, after his release, did convert to Sunni. (following the same path as Muhammad Ali)

Actually he is a member of the Naqshbandi Order (and any adherent of any branch of Sufism can appropriately be termed a Sufi), so...

Kind of a funny thing for you to say in light of the above two facts. :good

 

...and there we have it. :good

¼ Irish, ¼ Korean, ½ Russian.



So if Golovkin vs. Ward ever does happen it'll be the biggest all-Irish brawl since Micky Ward vs. Shea Neary, 15 years ago.

 

:thumbsup

 

In practice, he ends up punching dudes to sleep, yes.

His mindset, however, is that of a boxer.

To him boxing is a sport and an art. He doesn't even consider himself a "fighter" and has dismissed that label with mild annoyance (it was on some HBO profile doc on him a while back)

He doesn't "hulk up", doesn't motivate himself with anger, doesn't pump himself with emotion. He always fights calmly and intelligently, even when hit flush in the face or when confronted with a frustrated awkward spoiler or any opponent unwilling to engage. He doesn't want to hurt anybody, but at the same time has the stomach to do so in the course of winning. That's all he cares about: perfecting his art and winning. He literally doesn't ever game plan around knocking someone out.

That's a boxer's mindset, not a puncher's. (or even a boxer-puncher's)