Gennady Golovkin smashes Vanes Martirosyan in two rounds

Gennady Golovkin made short work of Vanes Martirosyan in HBO Boxing’s main event.

Cinco de Mayo was supposed to feature a lucrative rematch between unified middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin and Canelo Alvarez, but when Canelo failed his drug test for clenbuterol, the fight was scrapped. What we were treated to instead was “GGG” against Vanes Martirosyan , a good junior middleweight contender who’d not fought for two years, is not a middleweight, and is trained by Edmond Tarverdyan.

It did not end well for Mr. Martirosyan.

Fans at the StubHub Center cheered on Golovkin, who is popular among Mexican fans and resides in Southern California, and he didn’t disappoint. Round 1 was reasonably close with both men landing good shots on each other, and Golovkin looking momentarily stunned in the closing seconds, but round 2 was a different story. Martirosyan got cracked with hard uppercuts, left hooks, right hands, jabs, you name it. A right hand hurt Martirosyan, then Golovkin unleashed the combo of doom that sent Vanes down and out.

Official result: Gennady Golovkin (38-0-1, 34 KOs) def. Vanes Martirosyan (36-4-1, 21 KOs) by KO at 1:53 of round 2 to defend his WBA, WBC, and IBO middleweight titles

** – Golovkin’s IBF belt was not at stake.

This fight was a mismatch on paper and it pretty much played out that way. I suppose the satisfaction out of this would be seeing a violent GGG knockout again, as well as Edmond Tarverdyan schadenfreude.

All eyes now are on whether or not we see Golovkin vs. Canelo get booked again, or if Gennady ends up fighting one of the many other top contenders at middleweight, whether that be IBF mandatory challenger Sergey Derevyanchenko, Jermall Charlo, Daniel Jacobs again, or WBO champ Billy Joe Saunders.

In the co-main event, undisputed welterweight champion Cecilia Braekhus (33-0, 9 KOs) overcame a scare in the second-half of the fight, as she survived a knockdown and won a unanimous decision over Kali Reis (13-7-2, 4 KOs). It looked as if the consensus #1 pound-for-pound women’s pugilist was in control at the halfway mark thanks to her more precise, technical boxing craft, but Reis floored Braekhus late in round 7 with a right hand. Reis would buckle Braekhus again at the end of the 8th, but would not be able to muster up something extra to pull off the stunning upset.

Of note, UFC women’s featherweight champion Cris Cyborg was in attendance for this one.

To cap things off, official fights purses for the HBO televised bouts were as follows:

Gennady Golovkin: $1 million
Vanes Martirosyan: $225,000

Cecilia Braekhus: $50,000
Kali Reis: $25,000

…Yes, the best women’s boxer in the world has a reported payout of $50,000. And yes, Golovkin lost out on millions of dollars due to the cancellation of the Canelo rematch.