title: Manchester

text: Manchester's museums celebrate Manchester's Roman history, rich industrial heritage and its role in the Industrial Revolution, the textile industry, the Trade Union movement, women's suffrage and football. A reconstructed part of the Roman fort of Mamucium is open to the public in Castlefield. The Science and Industry Museum, housed in the former Liverpool Road railway station, has a large collection of steam locomotives, industrial machinery, aircraft and a replica of the world's first stored computer program (known as the Manchester Baby). The Museum of Transport displays a collection of historic buses and trams. Trafford Park in the neighbouring borough of Trafford is home to Imperial War Museum North. The Manchester Museum opened to the public in the 1880s, has notable Egyptology and natural history collections.


title: Manchester

text: The municipally owned Manchester Art Gallery in Mosley Street houses a permanent collection of European painting and one of Britain's main collections of Pre-Raphaelite paintings.


title: Manchester

text: In the south of the city, the Whitworth Art Gallery displays modern art, sculpture and textiles and was voted Museum of the Year in 2015. Other exhibition spaces and museums in Manchester include Islington Mill in Salford, the National Football Museum at Urbis, Castlefield Gallery, the Manchester Costume Gallery at Platt Fields Park, the People's History Museum and the Manchester Jewish Museum.


title: Manchester

text: The work of Stretford-born painter , known for "matchstick" paintings of industrial Manchester and Salford, can be seen in the City and Whitworth Manchester galleries, and at the Lowry art centre in Salford Quays (in the neighbouring borough of Salford), which devotes a large permanent exhibition to his works.


title: Manchester

text: Manchester is a UNESCO City of Literature known for a "radical literary history". Manchester in the 19th century featured in works highlighting the changes that industrialisation had brought. They include Elizabeth Gaskell's novel "Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life" (1848), and studies such as "The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844" by Friedrich Engels, while living and working here. Manchester was the meeting place of Engels and Karl Marx. The two began writing "The Communist Manifesto" in Chetham's Library – founded in 1653 and claiming to be the oldest public library in the English-speaking world. Elsewhere in the city, the John Rylands Library holds an extensive collection of early printing. The Rylands Library Papyrus P52, believed to be the earliest extant New Testament text, is on permanent display there.


title: Manchester

text: Letitia Landon's poetical illustration "Manchester" to a vista over the city by G. Pickering in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1835, records the rapid growth of the city and its cultural importance.


title: Manchester

text: Charles Dickens is reputed to have set his novel "Hard Times" in the city, and though partly modelled on Preston, it shows the influence of his friend Mrs Gaskell. Gaskell penned all her novels but "Mary Barton" at her home in 84 Plymouth Grove. Often her house played host to influential authors: Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Charles Eliot Norton, for example. It is now open as a literary museum.


title: Manchester

text: Charlotte Brontë began writing her novel "Jane Eyre" in 1846, while staying at lodgings in Hulme. She was accompanying her father Patrick, who was convalescing in the city after cataract surgery. She probably envisioned Manchester Cathedral churchyard as the burial place for Jane's parents and the birthplace of Jane herself. Also associated with the city is the Victorian poet and novelist Isabella Banks, famed for her 1876 novel "The Manchester Man". Anglo-American author Frances Hodgson Burnett was born in the city's Cheetham Hill district in 1849, and wrote much of her classic children's novel "The Secret Garden" while visiting nearby Salford's Buile Hill Park.


title: Manchester

text: Anthony Burgess is among the 20th-century writers who made Manchester their home. He wrote here the dystopian satire "A Clockwork Orange" in 1962. Dame Carol Ann Duffy, Poet Laureate from 2009 to 2019, moved to the city in 1996 and lives in West Didsbury.


title: Manchester

text: The night-time economy of Manchester has expanded significantly since about 1993, with investment from breweries in bars, public houses and clubs, along with active support from the local authorities. The more than 500 licensed premises in the city centre have a capacity to deal with more than visitors, with 110,000–130,000 people visiting on a typical weekend night, making Manchester the most popular city for events at 79 per thousand people. The night-time economy has a value of about £100 million, and supports 12,000 jobs.


title: Manchester

text: The Madchester scene of the 1980s, from which groups including The Stone Roses, the Happy Mondays, Inspiral Carpets, 808 State, James and The Charlatans emerged, was based around clubs such as The Haçienda. The period was the subject of the movie "24 Hour Party People". Many of the big clubs suffered problems with organised crime at that time; Haslam describes one where staff were so completely intimidated that free admission and drinks were demanded (and given) and drugs were openly dealt. Following a series of drug-related violent incidents, The Haçienda closed in 1997.


title: Manchester

text: Public houses in the Canal Street area have had an LGBTQ+ clientele since at least 1940, and now form the centre of Manchester's LGBTQ+ community. Since the opening of new bars and clubs, the area attracts 20,000 visitors each weekend and has hosted a popular festival, Manchester Pride, each August since 1995.


title: Manchester

text: There are three universities in the City of Manchester. The University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan University and Royal Northern College of Music. The University of Manchester is the second largest full-time non-collegiate university in the United Kingdom, created in 2004 by the merger of Victoria University of Manchester, founded in 1904, and UMIST, founded in 1956, having developed from the Mechanics' Institute founded, as indicated in the university's logo, in 1824. The University of Manchester includes the Manchester Business School, which offered the first MBA course in the UK in 1965.


title: Manchester

text: Manchester Metropolitan University was formed as Manchester Polytechnic on the merger of three colleges in 1970. It gained university status in 1992, and in the same year absorbed Crewe and Alsager College of Higher Education in South Cheshire. The Cheshire campus permanently closed in 2019. The University of Law, the largest provider of vocation legal training in Europe, has a campus in the city.


title: Manchester

text: The three universities are grouped around Oxford Road on the southern side of the city centre, which forms Europe's largest urban higher-education precinct. Together they have a combined population of over 80,000 students as of 2022.


title: Manchester

text: One of Manchester's notable secondary schools is Manchester Grammar School. Established in 1515, as a free grammar school next to what is now the cathedral, it moved in 1931 to Old Hall Lane in Fallowfield, south Manchester, to accommodate the growing student body. In the post-war period, it was a direct grant grammar school (i.e. partially state funded), but it reverted to independent status in 1976 after abolition of the direct-grant system. Its previous premises are now used by Chetham's School of Music. There are three schools nearby: William Hulme's Grammar School, Withington Girls' School and Manchester High School for Girls.


title: Manchester

text: In 2019, the Manchester Local Education Authority was ranked second to last out of Greater Manchester's ten LEAs and 140th out of 151 in the country LEAs based on the percentage of pupils attaining grades 4 or above in English and mathematics GCSEs (General Certificate of Secondary Education) with 56.2 per cent compared with the national average of 64.9 per cent. Of the 63 secondary schools in the LEA, four had 80 per cent or more pupils achieving Grade 4 or above in English and maths GCSEs: Manchester High School for Girls, The King David High School, Manchester Islamic High School for Girls, and Kassim Darwish Grammar School for Boys.


title: Manchester

text: Two Premier League football clubs bear the city's name – Manchester City and Manchester United. Manchester City's home is the City of Manchester Stadium in Bradford in east Manchester, built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games and then reconfigured as a football ground. Manchester United play home games at Old Trafford, the largest club ground in the United Kingdom – although this is not located within the City of Manchester and is in the neighbouring metropolitan borough of Trafford. Lancashire County Cricket Club also play in Trafford at Old Trafford Cricket Ground and regularly hosts international test matches.


title: Manchester

text: Sporting facilities built for the 2002 Commonwealth Games include the City of Manchester Stadium, National Squash Centre and Manchester Aquatics Centre. Manchester has competed twice to host the Olympic Games, beaten by Atlanta for 1996 and Sydney for 2000. The National Cycling Centre includes a velodrome, BMX Arena and Mountainbike trials, and is the home of British Cycling, UCI ProTeam Team Sky and Sky Track Cycling. The Manchester Velodrome, built as a part of the bid for the 2000 games, has become a catalyst for British success in cycling. The velodrome hosted the UCI Track Cycling World Championships for a record third time in 2008. The National Indoor BMX Arena (2,000 capacity) adjacent to the velodrome opened in 2011. The Manchester Arena hosted the FINA World Swimming Championships in 2008. Manchester hosted the World Squash Championships in 2008, the 2010 World Lacrosse Championship, the 2013 Ashes series, 2013 Rugby League World Cup and 2015 Rugby World Cup.


title: Manchester

text: "The Guardian" newspaper was founded in the city in 1821 as "The Manchester Guardian". Until 2008, its head office was still in the city, though many of its management functions were moved to London in 1964. For many years most national newspapers had offices in Manchester: "The Daily Telegraph", "Daily Express", "Daily Mail", "Daily Mirror", "The Sun". At its height, 1,500 journalists were employed, earning the city the nickname "second Fleet Street". In the 1980s the titles closed their northern offices and centred their operations in London.


title: Manchester

text: The main regional newspaper in the city is the "Manchester Evening News", which was for over 80 years the sister publication of "The Manchester Guardian". The "Manchester Evening News" has the largest circulation of a UK regional evening newspaper and is distributed free of charge in the city centre on Thursdays and Fridays, but paid for in the suburbs. Despite its title, it is available all day.


title: Manchester

text: Several local weekly free papers are distributed by the MEN group. The "Metro North West" is available free at Metrolink stops, rail stations and other busy locations.


title: Manchester

text: An attempt to launch a Northern daily newspaper, the "North West Times", employing journalists made redundant by other titles, closed in 1988. Another attempt was made with the "North West Enquirer", which hoped to provide a true "regional" newspaper for the North West, much in the same vein as the "Yorkshire Post" does for Yorkshire or "The Northern Echo" does for the North East; it folded in October 2006.


title: Manchester

text: Manchester has been a centre of television broadcasting since the 1950s. A number of television studios have been in operation around the city, and have since relocated to MediaCityUK in neighbouring Salford.


title: Manchester

text: The ITV franchise Granada Television has been based in Manchester since 1954. Now based at MediaCityUK, the company's former headquarters at Granada Studios on Quay Street with its distinctive illuminated sign were a prominent landmark on the Manchester skyline for several decades. Granada produces "Coronation Street," local news and programmes for North West England. Although its influence has waned, Granada had been described as "the best commercial television company in the world".


title: Manchester

text: With the growth in regional television in the 1950s, Manchester became one of the BBC's three main centres in England. In 1954, the BBC opened its first regional BBC Television studio outside London, Dickenson Road Studios, in a converted Methodist chapel in Rusholme. The first edition of "Top of the Pops" was broadcast here on New Year's Day 1964.


title: Manchester

text: From 1975, BBC programmes including "Mastermind", and "Real Story", were made at New Broadcasting House on Oxford Road. The "Cutting It" series set in the city's Northern Quarter and "The Street" were set in Manchester as was "Life on Mars". Manchester was the regional base for BBC One North West Region programmes before it relocated to MediaCityUK in nearby Salford Quays.


title: Manchester

text: The Manchester television channel, Channel M, owned by the Guardian Media Group operated from 2000, but closed in 2012. Manchester is also covered by two internet television channels: Quays News and Manchester.tv. The city had a new terrestrial channel from January 2014 when YourTV Manchester, which won the OFCOM licence bid in February 2013. It began its first broadcast, but in 2015, That's Manchester took over to air on 31 May and launched the freeview channel 8 service slot, before moving to channel 7 in April 2016.


title: Manchester

text: The city has the highest number of local radio stations outside London, including BBC Radio Manchester, Hits Radio Manchester, Capital Manchester and Lancashire, Greatest Hits Radio Manchester & The North West, Heart North West, Smooth North West, Gold, Radio X, NMFM (North Manchester FM) and XS Manchester. Student radio stations include Fuse FM at the University of Manchester and MMU Radio at the Manchester Metropolitan University. A community radio network is coordinated by Radio Regen, with stations covering Ardwick, Longsight and Levenshulme (All FM 96.9) and Wythenshawe (Wythenshawe FM 97.2). Defunct radio stations include Sunset 102, which became Kiss 102, then Galaxy Manchester), and KFM which became Signal Cheshire (later Imagine FM). These stations and pirate radio played a significant role in the city's house music culture, the Madchester scene.


title: Manchester

text: Manchester has formal twinning arrangements (or "friendship agreements") with several places. In addition, the British Council maintains a metropolitan centre in Manchester.


title: Manchester

text: Manchester is home to the largest group of consuls in the UK outside London. The expansion of international trade links during the Industrial Revolution led to the introduction of the first consuls in the 1820s and since then over 800, from all parts of the world, have been based in Manchester. Manchester hosts consular services for most of the north of England.


title: Emoji

text: An emoji ( ; plural emoji or emojis) is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. Examples of emoji are 😂, 😃, 🧘🏻♂, 🌍, 🌦, 🍞, 🚗, 📞, 🎉, ❤, 🍆, 🍑 and 🏁. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. They are much like emoticons, except emoji are pictures rather than typographic approximations; the term "emoji" in the strict sense refers to such pictures which can be represented as encoded characters, but it is sometimes applied to messaging stickers by extension. Originally meaning pictograph, the word "emoji" comes from Japanese  + ; the resemblance to the English words "emotion" and "emoticon" is purely coincidental. The ISO 15924 script code for emoji is codice_1.


title: Emoji

text: Originating on Japanese mobile phones in 1997, emoji became increasingly popular worldwide in the 2010s after being added to several mobile operating systems. They are now considered to be a large part of popular culture in the West and around the world. In 2015, Oxford Dictionaries named the Face with Tears of Joy emoji (😂) the word of the year.


title: Emoji

text: The emoji was predated by the emoticon, a concept implemented in 1982 by computer scientist Scott Fahlman when he suggested text-based symbols such as :-) and :-( could be used to replace language. Theories about language replacement can be traced back to the 1960s, when Russian novelist and professor Vladimir Nabokov stated in an interview with "The New York Times": "I often think there should exist a special typographical sign for a smile — some sort of concave mark, a supine round bracket." It did not become a mainstream concept until the 1990s when Japanese, American and European companies began developing Fahlman's idea. Mary Kalantzis and Bill Cope point out that similar symbology was incorporated by Bruce Parello, a student at the University of Illinois, into PLATO IV, the first e-learning system, in 1972. The PLATO system was not considered mainstream, and therefore Parello's pictograms were only used by a small number of people. Scott Fahlman's emoticons importantly used common alphabet symbols, and aimed to replace language/text to express emotion, and for that reason are seen as the actual origin of emoticons.


title: Emoji

text: Wingdings, a font invented by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes, was released by Microsoft in 1990. It could be used to send pictographs in rich text messages, but would only load on devices with the Wingdings font installed. In 1995, the French newspaper "Le Monde" announced that Alcatel would be launching a new phone, the BC 600. Its welcome screen displayed a digital smiley face, replacing the usual text seen as part of the "welcome message" often seen on other devices at the time. In 1997, J-Phone launched the SkyWalker DP-211SW, which contained a set of 90 emoji. It is thought to be the first set of its kind. Its designs, each measuring 12 by 12 pixels were monochrome, depicting numbers, sports, the time, moon phases and the weather. It contained the Pile of Poo emoji in particular. The J-Phone model experienced low sales, and the emoji set was thus rarely used.


title: Emoji

text: In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created 176 emoji as part of NTT DoCoMo's i-mode, used on its mobile platform. They were intended to help facilitate electronic communication, and to serve as a distinguishing feature from other services. Due to their influence, Kurita's designs were once claimed to be the first cellular emoji; however, Kurita has denied that this is the case. According to interviews, he took inspiration from Japanese manga where characters are often drawn with symbolic representations called "manpu" (such as a water drop on a face representing nervousness or confusion), and weather pictograms used to depict the weather conditions at any given time. He also drew inspiration from Chinese characters and street sign pictograms. The DoCoMo i-Mode set included facial expressions, such as smiley faces, derived from a Japanese visual style commonly found in manga and anime, combined with "kaomoji" and smiley elements. Kurita's work is displayed in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.


title: Emoji

text: Kurita's emoji were brightly colored, albeit with a single color per glyph. General-use emoji, such as sports, actions and weather, can readily be traced back to Kurita's emoji set. Notably absent from the set were pictograms that demonstrated emotion. The yellow-faced emoji in current use evolved from other emoticon sets and cannot be traced back to Kurita's work. His set also had generic images much like the J-Phones. Elsewhere in the 1990s, Nokia phones began including preset pictograms in its text messaging app, which they defined as "smileys and symbols". A third notable emoji set was introduced by Japanese mobile phone brand au by KDDI.


title: Emoji

text: The basic 12-by-12-pixel emoji in Japan grew in popularity across various platforms over the next decade. This was aided by the popularity of DoCoMo i-mode, which for many was the origins of the smartphone. The i-mode service also saw the introduction of emoji in conversation form on messenger apps. By 2004, i-mode had 40 million subscribers, exposing numerous people to emoji for the first time between 2000 and 2004. The popularity of i-mode led to other manufacturers offering their own emoji sets. While emoji adoption was high in Japan during this time, the competitors failed to collaborate to create a uniform set of emoji to be used across all platforms in the country.


title: Emoji

text: The Universal Coded Character Set (Unicode), controlled by the Unicode Consortium and ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2, had already been established as the international standard for text representation (ISO/IEC 10646) since 1993, although variants of Shift JIS remained relatively common in Japan. Unicode included several characters which would subsequently be classified as emoji, including some from North American or Western European sources such as DOS code page 437, ITC Zapf Dingbats or the WordPerfect Iconic Symbols set. Unicode coverage of written characters was extended several times by new editions during the 2000s, with little interest in incorporating the Japanese cellular emoji sets (deemed out of scope), although symbol characters which would subsequently be classified as emoji continued to be added. For example, Unicode 4.0 contained 16 new emoji, which included direction arrows, a warning triangle, and an eject button. Besides Zapf Dingbats, other dingbat fonts such as Wingdings or Webdings also included additional pictographic symbols in their own custom pi font encodings; unlike Zapf Dingbats, however, many of these would not be available as Unicode emoji until 2014.


title: Emoji

text: The Smiley Company developed The Smiley Dictionary, which was launched in 2001. The desktop platform was aimed at allowing people to insert smileys as text when sending emails and writing on a desktop computer. The smiley toolbar offered a variety of symbols and smileys and was used on platforms such as MSN Messenger. Nokia, then one of the largest global telecom companies, was still referring to today's emoji sets as smileys in 2001. The digital smiley movement was headed up by Nicolas Loufrani, the CEO of The Smiley Company. He created a smiley toolbar, which was available at smileydictionary.com during the early 2000s to be sent as emoji are today.


title: Emoji

text: Mobile providers in both the United States and Europe began discussions on how to introduce their own emoji sets from 2004 onwards. Many companies did not begin to take emoji seriously until Google employees requested that Unicode look into the possibility of a uniform emoji set. Apple quickly followed and began to collaborate with not only Google, but also providers in Europe and Japan. In August 2007, Mark Davis and his colleagues Kat Momoi and Markus Scherer wrote the first draft for consideration by the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC), to introduce emoji into the Unicode standard. The UTC, having previously deemed emoji to be out of scope for Unicode, made the decision to broaden its scope to enable compatibility with the Japanese cellular carrier formats which were becoming more widespread. Peter Edberg and Yasuo Kida joined the collaborative effort from Apple Inc. shortly after, and their official UTC proposal came in January 2009.


title: Emoji

text: Pending the assignment of standard Unicode code points, Google and Apple implemented emoji support via Private Use Area schemes. Google first introduced emoji in Gmail in October 2008, in collaboration with au by KDDI, and Apple introduced the first release of Apple Color Emoji to iPhone OS on 21 November 2008. Initially, Apple's emoji support was implemented for holders of a SoftBank SIM card; the emoji themselves were represented using SoftBank's Private Use Area scheme and mostly resembled the SoftBank designs. Gmail emoji used their own Private Use Area scheme, in a supplementary Private Use plane.


title: Emoji

text: Separately, a proposal had been submitted in 2008 to add the ARIB extended characters used in broadcasting in Japan to Unicode. This included several pictographic symbols. These were added in Unicode 5.2 in 2009, a year before the cellular emoji sets were fully added; they include several characters which either also appeared amongst the cellular emoji or were subsequently classified as emoji.


title: Emoji

text: After iPhone users in the United States discovered that downloading Japanese apps allowed access to the keyboard, pressure grew to expand the availability of the emoji keyboard beyond Japan. The Emoji application for iOS, which altered the Settings app to allow access to the emoji keyboard, was created by Josh Gare in February 2010. Before the existence of Gare's Emoji app, Apple had intended for the emoji keyboard to only be available in Japan in iOS version 2.2.


title: Emoji

text: Throughout 2009, members of the Unicode Consortium and national standardization bodies of various countries gave feedback and proposed changes to the international standardization of the emoji. The feedback from various bodies in the United States, Europe, and Japan agreed on a set of 722 emoji as the standard set. This would be released in October 2010 in Unicode 6.0. Apple made the emoji keyboard available to those outside of Japan in iOS version 5.0 in 2011. Later, Unicode 7.0 (June 2014) added the character repertoires of the Webdings and Wingdings fonts to Unicode, resulting in approximately 250 more Unicode emoji.


title: Emoji

text: The Unicode emoji whose code points were assigned in 2014 or earlier are therefore taken from several sources. A single character could exist in multiple sources, and characters from a source were unified with existing characters where appropriate: for example, the "shower" weather symbol (☔) from the ARIB source was unified with an existing umbrella with raindrops character, which had been added for KPS 9566 compatibility. The emoji characters named from all three Japanese carriers were in turn unified with the ARIB character. However, the Unicode Consortium groups the most significant sources of emoji into four categories:


title: Emoji

text: In late 2014, a Public Review Issue was created by the Unicode Technical Committee, seeking feedback on a proposed Unicode Technical Report (UTR) titled "Unicode Emoji". This was intended to improve interoperability of emoji between vendors, and define a means of supporting multiple skin tones. The feedback period closed in January 2015. Also in January 2015, the use of the zero width joiner to indicate that a sequence of emoji could be shown as a single equivalent glyph (analogous to a ligature) as a means of implementing emoji without atomic code points, such as varied compositions of families, was discussed within the "emoji ad-hoc committee".


title: Emoji

text: Unicode 8.0 (June 2015) added another 41 emoji, including articles of sports equipment such as the cricket bat, food items such as the taco, new facial expressions, and symbols for places of worship, as well as five characters (crab, scorpion, lion face, bow and arrow, amphora) to improve support for pictorial rather than symbolic representations of the signs of the Zodiac.


title: Emoji

text: Also in June 2015, the first approved version ("Emoji 1.0") of the Unicode Emoji report was published as Unicode Technical Report #51 (UTR #51). This introduced the mechanism of skin tone indicators, the first official recommendations about which Unicode characters were to be considered emoji, and the first official recommendations about which characters were to be displayed in an emoji font in absence of a variation selector, and listed the zero width joiner sequences for families and couples that were implemented by existing vendors. Maintenance of UTR #51, taking emoji requests, and creating proposals for emoji characters and emoji mechanisms was made the responsibility of the Unicode Emoji Subcommittee (ESC), operating as a subcommittee of the Unicode Technical Committee,


title: Emoji

text: With the release of version 5.0 in May 2017 alongside Unicode 10.0, UTR #51 was redesignated a Unicode Technical Standard (UTS #51), making it an independent specification rather than merely an informative document. , there were 2,666 Unicode emoji listed. The next version of UTS #51 (published in May 2018) skipped to the version number Emoji 11.0, so as to synchronise its major version number with the corresponding version of the Unicode Standard.


title: Emoji

text: The popularity of emoji has caused pressure from vendors and international markets to add additional designs into the Unicode standard to meet the demands of different cultures. Some characters now defined as emoji are inherited from a variety of pre-Unicode messenger systems not only used in Japan, including Yahoo and MSN Messenger.


title: Emoji

text: Corporate demand for emoji standardization has placed pressures on the Unicode Consortium, with some members complaining that it had overtaken the group's traditional focus on standardizing characters used for minority languages and transcribing historical records. Conversely, the Consortium recognises that public desire for emoji support has put pressure on vendors to improve their Unicode support, which is especially true for characters outside the Basic Multilingual Plane, thus leading to better support for Unicode's historic and minority scripts in deployed software.


title: Emoji

text: Oxford Dictionaries named its 2015 Word of the Year. Oxford noted that 2015 had seen a sizable increase in the use of the word "emoji" and recognized its impact on popular culture. Oxford Dictionaries President Caspar Grathwohl expressed that "traditional alphabet scripts have been struggling to meet the rapid-fire, visually focused demands of 21st Century communication. It's not surprising that a pictographic script like emoji has stepped in to fill those gaps—it's flexible, immediate, and infuses tone beautifully." SwiftKey found that "Face with Tears of Joy" was the most popular emoji across the world. The American Dialect Society declared to be the "Most Notable Emoji" of 2015 in their Word of the Year vote.


title: Emoji

text: Some emoji are specific to Japanese culture, such as a bowing businessman (), the shoshinsha mark used to indicate a beginner driver (), a white flower () used to denote "brilliant homework", or a group of emoji representing popular foods: ramen noodles (), dango (), onigiri (), curry (), and sushi (). Unicode Consortium founder Mark Davis compared the use of emoji to a developing language, particularly mentioning the American use of eggplant () to represent a phallus. Some linguists have classified emoji and emoticons as discourse markers.


title: Emoji

text: In December 2015 a sentiment analysis of emoji was published, and the Emoji Sentiment Ranking 1.0 was provided. In 2016, a musical about emoji premiered in Los Angeles. The computer-animated "The Emoji Movie" was released in summer 2017.


title: Emoji

text: In January 2017, in what is believed to be the first large-scale study of emoji usage, researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed over 1.2 billion messages input via the Kika Emoji Keyboard and announced that the Face With Tears of Joy was the most popular emoji. The Heart and the Heart eyes emoji stood second and third, respectively. The study also found that the French use heart emoji the most. People in countries like Australia, France, and the Czech Republic used more happy emoji, while this was not so for people in Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, where people used more negative emoji in comparison to cultural hubs known for restraint and self-discipline, like Turkey, France and Russia.


title: Emoji

text: There has been discussion among legal experts on whether or not emoji could be admissible as evidence in court trials. Furthermore, as emoji continue to develop and grow as a "language" of symbols, there may also be the potential of the formation of emoji "dialects". Emoji are being used as more than just to show reactions and emotions. Snapchat has even incorporated emoji in its trophy and friends system with each emoji showing a complex meaning. Emojis can also convey different meanings based on syntax and inversion. For instance, 'fairy comments' involve heart, star, and fairy emojis placed between the words of a sentence. These comments often invert the meanings associated with hearts and may be used to 'tread on borders of offense.'


title: Emoji

text: In 2017, the MIT Media Lab published DeepMoji, a deep neural network sentiment analysis algorithm that was trained on 1.2 billion emoji occurrences in Twitter data from 2013 to 2017. DeepMoji was found to outperform human subjects in correctly identifying sarcasm in Tweets and other online modes of communication.


title: Emoji

text: On March 5, 2019, a drop of blood () emoji was released, which is intended to help break the stigma of menstruation. In addition to normalizing periods, it will also be relevant to describe medical topics such as donating blood and other blood-related activities.


title: Emoji

text: A mosquito () emoji was added in 2018 to raise awareness for diseases spread by the insect, such as dengue and malaria.


title: Emoji

text: Linguistically, emoji are used to indicate emotional state, they tend to be used more in positive communication. Some researchers believe emoji can be used for visual rhetoric. Emoji can be use to set emotional tone in messages. Emoji tend not to have their own meaning but act as a paralanguage adding meaning to text. Emoji can add clarity and credibility to text.


title: Emoji

text: Sociolinguistically, the use of emoji differ depending on speaker and setting. Women use emoji more than men. Men use a wider variety of emoji. Women are more likely to use emoji in public communication than private communication. Extraversion and agreeableness are positively correlated with emoji use, neuroticism is negative correlated. Emoji use differ between cultures: studies in terms of Hofstede's cultural dimensions theory found that cultures with high power distance and tolerance to indulgence used more negative emojis, while those with high uncertainty avoidance, individualism, and long-term orientation use more positive emojis.


title: Emoji

text: Research has shown that emoji are often misunderstood. In some cases, this misunderstanding is related to how the actual emoji design is interpreted by the viewer; in other cases, the emoji that was sent is not shown in the same way on the receiving side.


title: Emoji

text: The first issue relates to the cultural or contextual interpretation of the emoji. When the author picks an emoji, they think about it in a certain way, but the same character may not trigger the same thoughts in the mind of the receiver (see also Models of communication).


title: Emoji

text: For example, people in China have developed a system for using emoji subversively, so that a smiley face could be sent to convey a despising, mocking, and even obnoxious attitude, as the orbicularis oculi (the muscle near that upper eye corner) on the face of the emoji does not move, and the orbicularis oris (the one near the mouth) tightens, which is believed to be a sign of suppressing a smile.


title: Emoji

text: The second problem relates to technology and branding. When an author of a message picks an emoji from a list, it is normally encoded in a non-graphical manner during the transmission, and if the author and the reader do not use the same software or operating system for their devices, the reader's device may visualize the same emoji in a different way. Small changes to a character's look may completely alter its perceived meaning with the receiver. As an example, in April 2020, British actress and presenter Jameela Jamil posted a tweet from her iPhone using the Face with Hand Over Mouth emoji (🤭) as part of a comment on people shopping for food during the COVID-19 pandemic. On Apple's iOS, the emoji expression is neutral and pensive, but on other platforms the emoji shows as a giggling face. Many fans were initially upset thinking that she, as a well off celebrity, was mocking poor people, but this was not her intended meaning.


title: Emoji

text: Researchers from German Studies Institute at Ruhr-Universität Bochum found that most people can easily understand an emoji when it replaces a word directly – like an icon for a rose instead of the word 'rose' – yet it takes people about 50 percent longer to comprehend the emoji.


title: Emoji

text: Emoji characters vary slightly between platforms within the limits in meaning defined by the Unicode specification, as companies have tried to provide artistic presentations of ideas and objects. For example, following an Apple tradition, the calendar emoji on Apple products always shows July 17, the date in 2002 Apple announced its iCal calendar application for macOS. This led some Apple product users to initially nickname July 17 "World Emoji Day". Other emoji fonts show different dates or do not show a specific one.


title: Emoji

text: Some Apple emoji are very similar to the SoftBank standard, since SoftBank was the first Japanese network on which the iPhone launched. For example, is female on Apple and SoftBank standards but male or gender-neutral on others.


title: Emoji

text: Journalists have noted that the ambiguity of emoji has allowed them to take on culture-specific meanings not present in the original glyphs. For example, has been described as being used in English-language communities to signify "non-caring fabulousness" and "anything from shutting haters down to a sense of accomplishment". Unicode manuals sometimes provide notes on auxiliary meanings of an object to guide designers on how emoji may be used, for example noting that some users may expect to stand for "a reserved or ticketed seat, as for an airplane, train, or theater".


title: Emoji

text: Some emoji have been involved in controversy due to their perceived meanings. Multiple arrests and imprisonments have followed usage of pistol (), knife (), and bomb () emoji in ways that authorities deemed credible threats.


title: Emoji

text: In the lead-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics, the Unicode Consortium considered proposals to add several Olympic-related emoji, including medals and events such as handball and water polo. By October 2015, these candidate emoji included "rifle" () and "modern pentathlon" (). However, in 2016, Apple and Microsoft opposed these two emoji, and the characters were added without emoji presentations, meaning that software is expected to render them in black-and-white rather than color, and emoji-specific software such as onscreen keyboards will generally not include them. In addition, while the original incarnations of the modern pentathlon emoji depicted its five events, including a man pointing a gun, the final glyph contains a person riding a horse, along with a laser pistol target in the corner.


title: Emoji

text: On August 1, 2016, Apple announced that in iOS 10, the pistol emoji () would be changed from a realistic revolver to a water pistol. Conversely, the following day, Microsoft pushed out an update to Windows 10 that changed its longstanding depiction of the pistol emoji as a toy ray-gun to a real revolver. Microsoft stated that the change was made to bring the glyph more in line with industry-standard designs and customer expectations. By 2018, most major platforms such as Google, Microsoft, Samsung, Facebook, and Twitter had transitioned their rendering of the pistol emoji to match Apple's water gun implementation. Apple's change of depiction from a realistic gun to a toy gun was criticised by, among others, the editor of Emojipedia, because it could lead to messages appearing differently to the receiver than the sender had intended. "Insider" Rob Price said it created the potential for "serious miscommunication across different platforms", and asked "What if a joke sent from an Apple user to a Google user is misconstrued because of differences in rendering? Or if a genuine threat sent by a Google user to an Apple user goes unreported because it is taken as a joke?"


title: Emoji

text: The eggplant (aubergine) emoji () has also seen controversy due to it being used to represent a penis. Beginning in December 2014, the hashtag began to rise to popularity on Instagram for use in marking photos featuring clothed or unclothed penises. This became such a popular trend that, beginning in April 2015, Instagram disabled the ability to search for not only the tag, but also other eggplant-containing hashtags, including simply and .


title: Emoji

text: The peach emoji () has likewise been used as a euphemistic icon for buttocks, with a 2016 Emojipedia analysis revealing that only seven percent of English language tweets with the peach emoji refer to the actual fruit. In 2016, Apple attempted to redesign the emoji to less resemble buttocks. This was met with fierce backlash in beta testing, and Apple reversed its decision by the time it went live to the public.


title: Emoji

text: In December 2017, a lawyer in Delhi, India, threatened to file a lawsuit against WhatsApp for allowing use of the middle finger emoji () on the basis that the company is "directly abetting the use of an offensive, lewd, obscene gesture" in violation of the Indian Penal Code.


title: Emoji

text: Various, often incompatible, character encoding schemes were developed by the different mobile providers in Japan for their own emoji sets. For example, the extended Shift JIS representation F797 is used for a convenience store (🏪) by SoftBank, but for a wristwatch (⌚) by KDDI. All three vendors also developed schemes for encoding their emoji in the Unicode Private Use Area: DoCoMo, for example, used the range U+E63E through U+E757. Versions of iOS prior to 5.1 encoded emoji in the SoftBank private use area.


title: Emoji

text: Most, but not all, emoji are included in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane (SMP) of Unicode, which is also used for ancient scripts, some modern scripts such as Adlam or Osage, and special-use characters such as Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols. Some systems introduced prior to the advent of Unicode emoji were only designed to support characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP), on the assumption that non-BMP characters would rarely be encountered, although failure to properly handle characters outside of the BMP precludes Unicode compliance.


title: Emoji

text: The introduction of Unicode emoji created an incentive for vendors to improve their support for non-BMP characters. The Unicode Consortium notes that "[b]ecause of the demand for emoji, many implementations have upgraded their Unicode support substantially", also helping support for minority languages that use those features.


title: Emoji

text: Any operating system that supports adding additional fonts to the system can add an emoji-supporting font. However, inclusion of colorful emoji in existing font formats requires dedicated support for color glyphs. Not all operating systems have support for color fonts, so in these cases emoji might have to be rendered as black-and-white line art or not at all. There are four different formats used for multi-color glyphs in an SFNT font, not all of which are necessarily supported by a given operating system library or software package such as a web browser or graphical program. This means that color fonts may need to be supplied in several formats to be usable on multiple operating systems, or in multiple applications.


title: Emoji

text: Apple first introduced emoji to their desktop operating system with the release of OS X 10.7 Lion, in 2011. Users can view emoji characters sent through email and messaging applications, which are commonly shared by mobile users, as well as any other application. Users can create emoji symbols using the "Characters" special input panel from almost any native application by selecting the "Edit" menu and pulling down to "Special Characters", or by the key combination . The emoji keyboard was first available in Japan with the release of iPhone OS version 2.2 in 2008. The emoji keyboard was not officially made available outside of Japan until iOS version 5.0. From iPhone OS 2.2 through to iOS 4.3.5 (2011), those outside Japan could access the keyboard but had to use a third-party app to enable it. Apple has revealed that the "face with tears of joy" is the most popular emoji among English speaking Americans. On second place is the "heart" emoji followed by the "Loudly Crying Face".


title: Emoji

text: An update for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 brought a subset of the monochrome Unicode set to those operating systems as part of the "Segoe UI Symbol" font. As of Windows 8.1 Preview, the "Segoe UI Emoji" font is included, which supplies full-color pictographs. The plain Segoe UI font lacks emoji characters, whereas Segoe UI Symbol and Segoe UI Emoji include them. Emoji characters are accessed through the onscreen keyboard's key, or through the physical keyboard shortcut .


title: Emoji

text: Facebook and Twitter replace all Unicode emoji used on their websites with their own custom graphics. Prior to October 2017, Facebook had different sets for the main site and for its Messenger service, where only the former provides complete coverage. Messenger now uses Apple emoji on iOS, and the main Facebook set elsewhere. Facebook reactions are only partially compatible with standard emoji.


title: Emoji

text: Specifying the desired presentation is done by following the base emoji with either U+FE0E VARIATION SELECTOR-15 (VS15) for text or U+FE0F VARIATION SELECTOR-16 (VS16) for emoji-style.


title: Emoji

text: Five symbol modifier characters were added with Unicode 8.0 to provide a range of skin tones for human emoji. These modifiers are called EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2, , , , and (U+1F3FB–U+1F3FF): 🏻 🏼 🏽 🏾 🏿. They are based on the Fitzpatrick scale for classifying human skin color. Human emoji that are not followed by one of these five modifiers should be displayed in a generic, non-realistic skin tone, such as bright yellow (■), blue (■), or gray (■). Non-human emoji (like ) are unaffected by the Fitzpatrick modifiers.


title: Emoji

text: , Fitzpatrick modifiers can be used with 131 human emoji spread across seven blocks: Dingbats, Emoticons, Miscellaneous Symbols, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs, Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A, and Transport and Map Symbols.


title: Emoji

text: The following table shows both the Unicode characters and the open-source "Twemoji" images, designed by Twitter:


title: Emoji

text: Implementations may use a zero-width joiner (ZWJ) between multiple emoji to make them behave like a single, unique emoji character. For example, the sequence , , , , (👨👩👧) could be displayed as a single emoji depicting a family with a man, a woman, and a girl if the implementation supports it. Systems that do not support it would ignore the ZWJs, displaying only the three base emoji in order (👨👩👧).


title: Emoji

text: Unicode previously maintained a catalog of emoji ZWJ sequences that were supported on at least one commonly available platform. The consortium has since switched to documenting sequences that are "recommended for general interchange" (RGI). These are clusters that emoji fonts are expected to include as part of the standard.


title: Emoji

text: The ZWJ has also been used to implement platform specific emojis. For example, in 2016 Microsoft released a series of Ninja Cat emojis for their Windows 10 Anniversary Update. The sequence , , were used to create Ninja Cat (🐱👤) . Ninja Cat and variants were removed in late 2021's "Fluent" emoji redesign.


title: Emoji

text: Unicode represents emoji using 1,424 characters spread across 24 blocks, of which 26 are Regional indicator symbols that combine in pairs to form flag emoji, and 12 (#, * and 0–9) are base characters for keycap emoji sequences:


title: Emoji

text: 637 of the 768 code points in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block are considered emoji. 242 of the 256 code points in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block are considered emoji. All of the 107 code points in the Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A block are considered emoji. All of the 80 code points in the Emoticons block are considered emoji. 105 of the 118 code points in the Transport and Map Symbols block are considered emoji. 83 of the 256 code points in the Miscellaneous Symbols block are considered emoji. 33 of the 192 code points in the Dingbats block are considered emoji.


title: Emoji

text: Additional emoji can be found in the following Unicode blocks: Arrows (8 code points considered emoji), Basic Latin (12), CJK Symbols and Punctuation (2), Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement (41), Enclosed Alphanumerics (1), Enclosed CJK Letters and Months (2), Enclosed Ideographic Supplement (15), General Punctuation (2), Geometric Shapes (8), Geometric Shapes Extended (13), Latin-1 Supplement (2), Letterlike Symbols (2), Mahjong Tiles (1), Miscellaneous Symbols and Arrows (7), Miscellaneous Technical (18), Playing Cards (1), and Supplemental Arrows-B (2).


title: Emoji

text: Some vendors, most notably Microsoft, Samsung and HTC, add emoji presentation to some other existing Unicode characters or coin their own ZWJ sequences.


title: Emoji

text: Microsoft displays all Mahjong tiles (U+1F000‥2B, not just ) and alternative card suits (, , , ) as emoji. They also support additional pencils (, ) and a heart-shaped bullet ().


title: Emoji

text: While only is officially an emoji, Microsoft and Samsung add the other three directions as well (, , ).


title: Emoji

text: Both vendors pair the standard checked ballot box emoji with its crossed variant , but only Samsung also has the empty ballot box .


title: Emoji

text: Samsung almost completely covers the rest of the Miscellaneous Symbols block (U+2600‥FF) as emoji, which includes Chess pieces, game die faces, some traffic sign as well as genealogical and astronomical symbols for instance.


title: Emoji

text: HTC supports most additional pictographs from the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs (U+1F300‥5FF) and Transport and Map Symbols (U+1F680‥FF) blocks. Some of them are also shown as emoji on Samsung devices.


title: Emoji

text: The open source projects Emojidex and Emojitwo are trying to cover all of these extensions established by major vendors.


title: Bill Pullman

text: William Pullman (born December 17, 1953) is an American actor. After graduating with a Master of Fine Arts degree in theater, he was an adjunct professor at Montana State University before deciding to pursue acting. He made his film debut in "Ruthless People" (1986), and starred in "Spaceballs" (1987), "The Accidental Tourist" (1988), "Sleepless in Seattle" (1993), "While You Were Sleeping" (1995), "Casper" (1995), "Independence Day" (1996), "Lost Highway" (1997), and "Lake Placid" (1999). He has appeared frequently on television, usually in TV films. Starting in the 2000s he has also acted in miniseries and regular series, such as "" (2011), starring roles in "1600 Penn" (2012–13) and "The Sinner" (2017–2021). In 2021, he had a recurring role in the miniseries "Halston".


title: Bill Pullman

text: Pullman has also had a long stage acting career. He has appeared on Broadway several times, including in Edward Albee's "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" in 2002.


title: Bill Pullman

text: Pullman was born in Hornell, New York, the son of James Pullman, a physician, and Johanna (née Blaas), a nurse.


title: Bill Pullman

text: After graduating from Hornell High School in 1971, he attended the State University of New York at Delhi (SUNY Delhi) and the State University of New York at Oneonta (SUNY Oneonta) in the 1970s. He eventually received his Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He taught theater at SUNY Delhi and was an adjunct professor at Montana State University's School of Film and Photography in Bozeman, Montana, where his students persuaded him to pursue film roles.


title: Bill Pullman

text: During the 1980s, Pullman worked primarily with theater companies around New York and Los Angeles. His first prominent film role was in "Ruthless People", starring Danny DeVito and Bette Midler. Other notable films included the lead in "Spaceballs" (1987), "The Serpent and the Rainbow" (with Zakes Mokae), and "While You Were Sleeping" (1995). In 1996, he played the President of the United States in the sci-fi film "Independence Day". A year later he had a major role in "Lost Highway" (1997), and voiced Korso in the animated post-apocalyptic film "Titan A.E." His more recent films have included "The Grudge" and "Scary Movie 4". He also starred alongside Christian Bale in the musical "Newsies".


title: Bill Pullman

text: From February 2002 until September 2002, Pullman starred with Mercedes Ruehl in Edward Albee's play "The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia?" on Broadway. It won the 2002 Tony Award for Best Play, the 2002 Drama Desk Award Outstanding New Play, and the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Pullman was nominated for the 2002 Drama Desk Award Outstanding Actor in a Play.


title: Bill Pullman

text: He starred as Dr. Richard Massey in the miniseries "Revelations," and in Albee's play "Peter and Jerry", at off-Broadway's Second Stage Theatre in New York, for which he received a second Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Play in 2008.


title: Bill Pullman

text: Pullman is also a creative writer. His first play, "Expedition 6", is about the International Space Station mission Expedition 6, in orbit at the time the Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed on reentry, grounding the U.S. space shuttle program and requiring the ISS crew to remain in orbit an additional two months. The play opened at San Francisco's Magic Theater in September 2007.


title: Bill Pullman

text: He also appeared in the Broadway production of David Mamet's "Oleanna", co-starring Julia Stiles. It opened at the John Golden Theatre October 11, 2009, and closed on December 6, 2009 after 65 performances.


title: Bill Pullman

text: He is a jury member for the digital studio Filmaka, a platform for undiscovered filmmakers to show their work to industry professionals.


title: Bill Pullman

text: Pullman played Oswald Danes, a pedophile and child killer, in "", the fourth series of the BBC/Starz Entertainment television show "Torchwood" (a spinoff to the BBC series "Doctor Who"), the former of which began airing in July 2011. For his performance as Danes, he received a Saturn Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor on Television.


title: Bill Pullman

text: From 2012 to 2013, Pullman portrayed the president of the United States in the television comedy series "1600 Penn". He played detective Harry Ambrose in the USA Network mystery series "The Sinner", which premiered in 2017 and has aired for four seasons.


title: Bill Pullman

text: Pullman is married to Tamara Hurwitz, a modern dancer. Their three children are actor Lewis Pullman, singer-songwriter Maesa Pullman, and Jack Pullman.


title: Bill Pullman

text: At the age of 21, Pullman suffered a head injury when he fell while rehearsing a play, and lost his sense of smell and the feeling in his left elbow. He is an avid Buffalo Bills fan. He co-owns a cattle ranch with his brother in Montana, near the town of Whitehall, where he lives part-time. He also serves on the board of trustees at Alfred University and was awarded an honorary doctorate there on May 14, 2011. In 2018, he received an honorary doctorate from Montana State University, where he was formerly employed.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Gennadiy Gennadyevich Golovkin (Cyrillic: ; also spelled Gennady; born 8 April 1982), often known by his nickname "GGG" or "Triple G", is a Kazakhstani professional boxer. He has held multiple middleweight world championships, and is a two-time unified champion, having held the IBF title since 2019 and the WBA (Super) title since April 2022. Previously he held the unified WBA (Super), WBC and IBF titles between 2014 and 2018, and has challenged once for the undisputed super middleweight championship in 2022. He is also a two-time IBO middleweight champion, in his second reign since 2019.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin was ranked as the world's best boxer, pound for pound, from September 2017 to September 2018 by "The Ring" magazine. As of August 2022, he is ranked as the world's third best active boxer, pound for pound, by BoxRec, and tenth by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board (TBRB). He is also ranked as the world's best active middleweight by BoxRec, "The Ring", and TBRB, and second by ESPN.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: In 2010, Golovkin won the WBA interim middleweight title by defeating Milton Núñez. The WBA elevated him to Regular champion status in the same year. He won the IBO title the following year. In 2014, Golovkin was elevated to the status of WBA (Super) champion and successfully defended both his titles against Daniel Geale. Later that year he defeated Marco Antonio Rubio to win WBC interim middleweight title, and defeated David Lemieux for the IBF middleweight title in 2015. After Canelo Álvarez vacated his WBC middleweight title in 2016, Golovkin was elevated to full champion and held three of the four major world titles in boxing. Golovkin lost all his titles, including his undefeated record, following a loss to Álvarez in 2018. He regained his IBF and IBO titles by defeating Sergiy Derevyanchenko in 2019, and regained his WBA (Super) title by defeating Ryōta Murata in 2022.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: A calculating pressure fighter, Golovkin is known for his exceptionally powerful and precise punching, balance, and methodical movement inside the ring. With a streak of 23 knockouts that spanned from 2008 to 2017, he holds the highest knockout-to-win ratio – 89.7% – in middleweight championship history. Golovkin is also said to have one of the most durable chins in boxing history, having never been knocked down or otherwise stopped in a total of 395 fights, 45 as a professional and 350 as an amateur.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: In his amateur career, Golovkin won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2003 World Championships. He went on to represent Kazakhstan at the 2004 Summer Olympics, winning a middleweight silver medal.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin was born in the city of Karaganda in the Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union (present-day Kazakhstan) to a Russian coal miner father and Korean mother, who worked as an assistant in a chemical laboratory.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: He has three brothers, two elder named Sergey and Vadim and a twin, Max. Sergey and Vadim had encouraged Golovkin to start boxing when Golovkin was eight years old. As a youth, Golovkin would walk the streets with them, who went around picking fights for him with grown men. When asked, "Are you afraid of him?", Golovkin would respond "No", and be told to fight. "My brothers, they were doing that from when I was in kindergarten," Golovkin said. "Every day, different guys." When Golovkin was nine years old, Golovkin's two older brothers joined the Soviet Army. In 1990, the government had informed Golovkin's family that Vadim was dead. In 1994, the government told Golovkin's family that Sergey was dead.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin's first boxing gym was in Maikuduk, Karaganda, Kazakhstan, where his first boxing coach was Victor Dmitriev, whom he regards as "very good". A month after he first entered the gym, at age 10, the trainer ordered him to step into the ring to check his skills and he lost his first fight.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin began boxing competitively in 1993, age 11, winning the local Karaganda Regional tournament in the cadet division. It took several years before he was allowed to compete against seniors, and seven years before he was accepted to the Kazakhstani national boxing team, and began competing internationally. In the meantime he graduated from the Karagandy State University Athletics and Sports Department, receiving a degree and a PE teacher qualification. He became a scholarship holder with the Olympic Solidarity program in November 2002.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: At the 2003 World Amateur Boxing Championships in Bangkok, he won the gold medal beating future two-time champion Matvey Korobov (RUS) 19–10, Andy Lee (29–9), Lucian Bute (stoppage), Yordanis Despaigne in the semi-finals (29–26) and Oleg Mashkin in the finals. Upon his victory at the 2003 Championships, a boxing commentator calling the bout for NTV Plus Sports, said: "Golovkin. Remember that name! We sure will hear it again."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: He qualified for the Athens Games by winning the gold medal at the 2004 Asian Amateur Boxing Championships in Puerto Princesa, Philippines. In the final he defeated home fighter Christopher Camat. At the 2004 Summer Olympics he defeated Ahmed Ali Khan Pakistan 31–10, Ramadan Yasser 31–20 and Andre Dirrell 23–18, losing to the Russian Gaydarbek Gaydarbekov 18–28 to take the silver medal.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: At the World Championships in 2005 he lost to Mohamed Hikal. He finished his amateur career with a record of 345–5, with all his defeats being very close on points (like 8–+8 versus Damian Austin, or 14–15 versus Andre Dirrell), no stoppages, and the majority of all losses eventually avenged within a year.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: After ending his amateur career in 2005, Golovkin signed with the Universum Box-Promotion (UBP) and made his professional debut in May 2006. By the end of 2008, Golovkin's record stood at 14–0 (11 KO) and while he had few wins over boxers regarded as legitimate contenders, he was regarded as one of the best prospects in the world. Golovkin was given 4 more relatively easy bouts in 2009. In 2010, Universum started to run into financial issues after having been dropped by German television channel ZDF. This caused a number of issues for Golovkin who was effectively unable to fight in Germany, and contract disputes between the two parties got complicated.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin terminated his contract with Universum in January 2010 and stated the following in an interview: "The reason for this decision is that I've always been placed behind Felix Sturm and Sebastian Zbik by Universum. Our demands to fight against Felix Sturm or Sebastian Zbik have been always rejected on absurd grounds. Universum had no real plan or concept for me, they did not even try to bring my career forward. They would rather try to prevent me from winning a title as long as Sturm and Zbik are champions. Further more, bouts against well-known and interesting opponents were held out in prospect, but nothing happened. This situation was not acceptable. It was time to move forward."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: After cutting ties with Universum, the WBA issued an interim title fight between Golovkin, ranked #1 at the time, and Milton Núñez. Golovkin routed Núñez, defeating him in 58 seconds to become a world champion. Golovkin was promptly upgraded to WBA (Regular) champion. He tried to fight WBA (Super) champion Felix Sturm and Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam during this time, but was unable to get them in the ring. Oleg Hermann, Golovkin's manager, said "It is very hard to find a good opponent. Everybody knows that Felix Sturm is afraid of Gennady. Strictly speaking, Sturm should get out of boxing and become a marathon runner because he is running fast and long. He has an excellent chance to become a champion in athletics."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin was determined to become a worldwide name, dreaming of following in the Klitschko brothers' footsteps by fighting in Madison Square Garden and Staples Center. He signed with K2 Promotions and went into training in Big Bear, California with Abel Sanchez, the veteran trainer behind Hall of Famer Terry Norris and many other top talents. At first, Sanchez was misled by Golovkin's humble appearance: "I looked at him, I thought: 'Man! This guy is a choir boy!'." But soon he was stunned by and impressed with Golovkin's talent and attitude from their first meeting. He has since then worked to add Mexican-style aggression to Golovkin's Eastern European-style amateur discipline, thereby producing a formidable hybrid champion. "I have a chalkboard in the gym, and I wrote Ali's name, Manny Pacquiao's name and his name," Sanchez said. "I told him, 'You could be right there.' He was all sheepish, but once I felt his hands, and I saw how smart he was in the ring and how he caught on... sheesh. He's going to be the most-avoided fighter in boxing, or he's going to get the chance he deserves."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin was scheduled to make his HBO debut against Dmitry Pirog (20-0, 15 KOs) in August 2012. Pirog had vacated his WBO middleweight title to face Golovkin. This was because Pirog had been mandated to fight interim champion Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam. Weeks before the fight, it was announced that Pirog had suffered a back injury—a ruptured disc—that would prevent him from fighting on the scheduled date, but Golovkin would still face another opponent on HBO. Several comeback attempts by Pirog were thwarted by ongoing back problems, effectively forcing his premature retirement.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 20 July 2012, it was announced that Golovkin would defend his titles against European champion and "The Ring"'s #10-rated middleweight Grzegorz Proksa (28–1, 21 KOs) on 1 September at the Turning Stone Casino in Verona, New York. The fight was televised on HBO in the United States and Sky Sports in the UK. Golovkin put on an impressive performance in his American debut by battering Proksa to a fifth-round technical knockout (TKO), which was Proksa's first loss by knockout. Proksa praised Golovkin's power, "The guy hits like a hammer. I tried everything, but it did not work. You have to give him credit, because he had a good handle on the situation and it was an honor to meet him in the ring." CompuBox Stats showed that Golovkin landed 101 of 301 punches thrown (34%) and Proksa landed 38 of his 217 thrown (18%).


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: In October, when the WBA (Super) middleweight champion Daniel Geale signed to fight Anthony Mundine in a rematch, the WBA stripped Geale of the title and named Golovkin the sole WBA champion at middleweight.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 30 November 2012, it was announced that Golovkin would next fight "The Ring"'s #9-rated light middleweight Gabriel Rosado (21–5, 13 KO) on the HBO Salido-Garcia card in the co-main event. On 19 January 2012, it was said that Golovkin would agree a catchweight of 158 pounds, two pounds below the middleweight limit. Rosado later rejected the proposal, stating he would fight at the full 160 pound limit.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin continued his stoppage-streak with a TKO victory over Rosado. The fight was halted when Rosado's corner threw in the towel to save Rosado, who was battered and bleeding heavily from his nose and left eye. At the time of the stoppage, Golovkin led on the judges' scorecards 60–54, 60–54, and 59–55. According to CompuBox Stats, Golovkin landed 208 of 492 punches thrown (42%) and Rosado landed only 76 of his 345 thrown (22%).


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: It was first reported on 31 January 2013, that a deal was close for Golovkin to defend his world titles against former WBA interim super welterweight champion Nobuhiro Ishida (24–8–2, 9 KO) in Monte Carlo on 30 March. Ishida had lost his last two fights, but had never been stopped in his 13-year career. Golovkin became the first to knock out Ishida, in what was said to be a 'stay busy fight', finishing him in the third round with a vicious overhand right. The referee did not begin a count and immediately waved an end to the bout.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin fought British former two-time world title challenger Matthew Macklin (29-4, 20 KOs) at the MGM Grand at Foxwoods Resort in Mashantucket, Connecticut on 29 June 2013. The fight was officially announced in April. Macklin previously lost back to back world title fights against Felix Sturm and Sergio Martinez in 2011 and 2012, respectively. Golovkin stated that he wanted to fight a further two times in 2013. This was rare to hear from a world champion as majority fight only 2 or 3 times a year. There was a total of 2,211 fans in attendance. Macklin was billed as Golovkin's toughest opponent to date. In round 1, Golovkin landed clean with his right hand and sent Macklin against the ropes, although it could have been ruled a knockdown because it appeared that only the roped kept Macklin on his feet, referee Eddie Cotton, ruled out the knockdown. Golovkin dominates the first two rounds. In the third round, Golvokin landed a right uppercut followed by a left hook to the body. Macklin, in pain, was counted out and the fight was stopped at 1 minute 22 seconds of the round. Macklin called Golovkin the best opponent he has fought in the post-fight interview. Golovkin retained his WBA and IBO world titles. CompuBox Stats showed that Golovkin landed 58 of 116 punches thrown (50%) and Macklin landed 29 of 118 (25%).He earned $350,000 compared to the $300,000 earned by Macklin. The fight averaged 1.1 million viewers.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 18 August 2013, Sports Illustrated announced that Golvokin would next defend with world titles against " The Ring"'s #9-rated middleweight Curtis Stevens (25–3, 18 KO) at the Madison Square Garden Theater in Manhattan, New York on 2 November. At the time, Stevens was ranked #5 WBC and #6 IBF. Main Events, who promote Stevens, initially turned down a $300,000 offer. It was likely K2 promotions offered an increase to get Stevens in the ring with Golovkin.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: In front of 4,618, Golovkin successfully retained his titles against Stevens via an eighth-round technical knockout, methodically breaking down the latter with many ferocious punches to the head and body. Stevens went down hard in the 2nd from two left hooks to the head, and after watching their fighter absorb enormous punishment Stevens' corner called for a halt in the 8th. At the time of stoppage, Golovkin was ahead 80–71, 79–71, and 79–72. The event captured huge interest around the world, with it is broadcast in more than 100 countries worldwide, including Sky Sports in the United Kingdom, Channel 1 in Russia and Polsat TV in Poland. The win was Golovkin's 15th straight stoppage victory and further cemented his status as one of the greatest finishers in the middleweight division. After the fight, Golovkin said, "He was strong, and I was a little cautious of his strength, but I felt comfortable in there and never felt like I was in any trouble [...] I am ready to fight anybody, but, specifically, I want to fight lineal champion Sergio Martinez."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: CompuBox Stats showed that Golovkin landed 293 of 794 punches thrown (37%), which included 49% of power punches landed, while Stevens landed 97 of 303 thrown (32%). Golovkin's purse was $400,000 while Stevens received $290,000. The fight averaged 1.41 million viewers on HBO and peaked at 1.566 million.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin's camp requested that he be awarded the WBA (Super) middleweight title in December 2013, but this was refused by the WBA, as Golovkin was already granted special permission for a fight prior to his mandatory commitment.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin's next title defense took place in Monte Carlo against former title challenger Osumanu Adama (22–3, 16 KO) on 1 February 2014. HBO released a statement on 22 January confirming they could not televise the bout in the US. The reason stated was because of the size of the venue Salle des Etoiles and production issues. Coming into the fight, Adama was ranked #12 by the WBA. Golovkin won via seventh-round stoppage. At the end of the 1st round, Golovkin dropped Adama with a solid jab and right hand. Golovkin went on to drop Adama again in the 6th by landing two sharp left hooks to his head, and then again in the 7th with a hard jab. Golovkin then nailed Adama with a left hook to the jaw, sending Adama staggering and forcing the referee to stop the bout. When the reporter asked Golovkin, after the fight, who he would to fight next, he replied, "I want to fight Sergio Martinez to prove who's the best middleweight." At the time of stoppage, one judge had it 60–52 and the other two at 59–53 in favor of Golovkin.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: A day after defeating Adama, a fight with Irish boxer Andy Lee (31-2, 22 KOs) was being discussed for 26 April, which was the next time Golovkin would appear on HBO at the Theater at Madison Square Garden. It was reported on 28 February that a deal was close to being made, however on 1 March, the fight was called off when Golovkin's father died after suffering a heart attack, aged 68. Due to beliefs, they have a 40-day mourning period, K2 director Tom Loeffler explained.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 3 June 2014, after ten successful title defenses, the World Boxing Association officially elevated Golovkin from Regular middleweight champion to Super champion. Golovkin was also granted a special permission to defend his title against Daniel Geale. Golovkin had been previously ordered to face #2 Jarrod Fletcher.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: K2 Promotions announced Golovkin would fight against "The Ring"'s #2-rated middleweight Daniel Geale (30-2, 16 KOs) at the Madison Square Garden Theater in New York on 26 July 2014, live on HBO. In front of 8,572 at The Theater, Golovkin successfully defended his title, defeating Geale via a third round stoppage. Golovkin dropped Geale in the second round. A right hand in the third sent Geale down again from which he never recovered completely. A staggering Geale prompted a swift stoppage from referee Michael Ortega. Geale's defeat started from a stiff Golovkin Jab, according to GGG's trainer Abel Sanchez, "Gennady hit him with a jab in the second round and that was a telling point." The accuracy of punches by both fighters were at the 29% mark by Compubox, but the effectiveness of those that connected resulted in a noteworthy win for Golovkin in his record. Golovkin earned $750,000 compared to Geale who received $600,000. The fight averaged 984,000 viewers and peaked 1.048 million viewers on HBO. This was a big dip compared to what Golovkin achieved against Stevens, the last time he appeared on HBO.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 12 August 2014, it was rumored that Golovkin would next fight former multiple time world title challenger and then Interim WBC champion Marco Antonio Rubio (59-6-1, 51 KO). On 20 August, the fight between Golovkin and Rubio was made official. K2 Promotions announced the fight would place on 18 October 2014, on HBO at the StubHub Center in Carson, California. It would mark the first time Golovkin would fight in the West Coast. Golovkin spoke to ESPN about the announcement, "I'm very excited to fight in California. I always enjoy attending fights at the StubHub Center and look forward to a Mexican-style fight against Marco Antonio Rubio." Rubio failed to make weight, weighing in at 161.8 pounds, thus losing the Interim WBC title on the scales. Rubio was given the 2 hour timescales to lose the extra weight, but decided against this. The fight still went ahead.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: The record attendance of 9,323 was announced. Golovkin outworked Rubio in a competitive first round, landing more punches. In the second round, Golovkin landed an overhand power left to the head of Rubio with Rubio on the ropes. Rubio then went to his back on the canvas, and took the full ten count in Spanish from referee Jack Reiss. After the knockout, Rubio got up and was motioning with a glove to the back of his head to the referee. However, the knockout blow was clean, and the count, which was given in Spanish was of normal speed. Golovkin retained his WBA (Super) and IBO middleweight titles and won the WBC Interim title which made him mandatory challenger to full titleholder Miguel Cotto. Golovkin in the post fight showed respect, "Rubio, he does not step back. He is a good fighter. I respect him. It was a very hard punch." Rubio earned $350,000 after having to forfeit $100,000 to Golovkin for not making weight, who earned a base purse of $900,000 not including any pay through his promoter. With this being Golovkin's 12th successive defense, it tied him with Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Felix Sturm for third-most in middleweight history. The number of defenses, however, is sometimes questioned as the WBA Regular belt, held by Golovkin previously, is regarded as a secondary title. ESPN reported the fight averaged 1.304 million viewers and peaked at 1.323 million.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 21 February 2015, Golovkin defended his middleweight titles against British boxer Martin Murray (28-1-1, 12 KOs) in Monte Carlo. The fight was officially announced in October 2014. Murray started the fight off well defensively, but by the fourth round Golovkin began to heat up and started finding Murray consistently. Murray was knocked down twice in the fourth round, even sustaining an additional punch to the head while down on a knee. Golovkin found it much easier to land his punches on Murray in the middle-rounds. Although Murray's chin withstood a lot of Golovkin punches in those middle-rounds, he eventually went down again in round 10 after sustaining a lot of punishment. Murray came out for round 11 and therefore had lasted longer in the ring with Golovkin than any other of his opponents so far, although Murray came out with a bloodied countenance and Golovkin continued to connect with shots, the referee stopped the bout as he felt Murray was not fighting back effectively and had taken too many punches. CompuBox statistics showed Golovkin landing 292 of 816 punches (36%), and Murray connected on 131 of 469 (28%). The fight aired on HBO in the USA during the afternoon and averaged 862,000 viewers. At the time of stoppage, the three judges had their respective scorecards reading 100–87, 99–88, and 99–88 in favor of Golovkin. The fight was televised live on HBO in the US in the afternoon and averaged 862,000 viewers, peaking at 938,000 viewers. Although it was a decline in viewership for Golovkin on HBO, it was expected as it was shown during the day and not peak time.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Boxing Insider reported that a deal had been agreed for Golovkin to defend his titles against American Willie Monroe Jr. (19-1, 6 KOs) at The Forum, Inglewood, California on 16 May 2015. In front of 12,372, Golovkin defeated Monroe via sixth-round TKO, to extend his KO streak to 20. In the first minute of the first round, Monroe started fast with superior movement and jabs, but after that the pace slowed with GGG cutting off the ring and outworking him. In round six, GGG came forward and quickly caught an off guard Monroe with power shots along the ropes, and Monroe went down to his knees, just beating the ten count of referee Jack Reiss. Referee Reiss was willing to give Monroe another chance, but Monroe did not wish to continue, stating, "I'm done." Reiss immediately stopped the contest. Monroe was dropped a total of three times. At the time of the stoppage, the scorecards read 50–43, 50–43, and 49–44 for Golovkin. Golovkin landed 133 of 297 punches thrown (45%), Monroe landed 87 punches of 305 thrown (29%). In the post-fight, Golovkin said, "Willie is a good fighter, a tough fighter. I feel great. My performance was special for you guys. This was a very good drama show. This was for you." He then spoke about future fights, "I stay here. I am the real champion. I want unification. Let's go, let's do it guys. Who is No. 1 right now? Bring it on. I will show you." In regards to unification and big fights, the names of Miguel Cotto, Saúl Álvarez and Andre Ward were mentioned. Golovkin received a purse of $1.5 million and Monroe earned $100,000 for the fight. The fight drew an average viewership of 1.338 million and peaked at 1.474 million viewers.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: It was announced in July 2015 that Golovkin would be defending his three world titles against IBF world champion David Lemieux (34–2, 31 KOs) in a unification fight at the Madison Square Garden in New York City on 17 October 2015, live on HBO Pay-Per-View. Both boxers took to Twitter to announce the news. Lemieux won the then vacant IBF title by outpointing Hassan N'Dam N'Jikam in June 2015.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin defeated Lemieux via eighth-round technical knockout to unify his WBA (Super), IBO, and WBC Interim middleweight titles with Lemieux's IBF title. Golovkin established the pace with his jab while landing his power shots in between, keeping Lemieux off-balance the entire night. Lemieux was dropped by a body shot in the fifth round and sustained an additional punch to the head after he had taken a knee. He was badly staggered in the eighth, so the referee was forced to halt the bout. Golovkin landed 280 of 549 punches thrown (51%) whilst Lemieux landed 89 of 335 (27%).


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: The fight generated 153,000 PPV buys on HBO and generated a further $2 million live gate from the sold out arena. The fight was replayed later in the week and averaged 797,000 viewers and peaked just over 1 million viewers.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 10 February 2016, it was announced that Golovkin would defend his IBF and WBA middleweight titles on HBO against IBF mandatory challenger Dominic Wade (18–0, 12 KOs) on 23 April at The Forum in Inglewood, California. This bout wasn't expected to be very competitive for Golovkin, who also stated that he wouldn't underestimate Wade and added, "I’m happy to fight again at the Forum in front of my fans and friends in Los Angeles, Dominic Wade is a very hungry and skilled middleweight who is undefeated and will be another big test for me." Wade was very thankful for getting the opportunity to fight Golovkin, "I am so grateful to be given the opportunity to fight ‘GGG’ for the IBF Middleweight Championship on April 23! I’ve worked hard my entire career to get to this point. I’m poised and ready to take on the challenge." The card was co-featured by Roman Gonzalez who successfully defended his WBC flyweight title with a unanimous points decision over McWilliams Arroyo. In front of a sellout crowd of 16,353, Golovkin successfully defended his middleweight titles with an early stoppage of Wade, his 22nd successive knockout. Wade was knocked down three times before the fight was stopped with 23 seconds remaining in round 2. According to CompuBox stats, Golovkin landed 54 of 133 punches (41%), with most being power punches. Wade managed to land 22 of his 75 thrown (29%). After the fight, when asked about Canelo Álvarez, Golovkin said, "I feel great. I'm here now, and I'm here to stay. I'm not going anywhere. Give me my belt, give me my belt! Let's fight," Golovkin reportedly earned a career high $2m for this fight compared to the $500,000 that Wade earned. The fight drew an average of 1,325,000 viewers and peaked at 3,888,000 on HBO.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Following Canelo Álvarez's victory against Miguel Cotto, talks began between the Golovkin and Álvarez camps over the future WBC title defense. In the end, an agreement was ultimately reached to allow interim bouts before the fight to, in the words of WBC president Mauricio Sulaiman, "maximize the interest in their highly anticipated showdown."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 18 May 2016, Álvarez vacated the WBC middleweight title, which resulted in Golovkin being immediately awarded the title by the WBC who officially recognized him as their middleweight champion.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 8 July 2016, it was announced that Golovkin would defend his world middleweight titles against undefeated British IBF welterweight champion Kell Brook (36–0, 25 KOs). The fight took place on 10 September 2016, at the O2 Arena in London, England. Brook was scheduled to fight in a unification bout against Jessie Vargas, whereas there was negotiations for Golovkin to fight Chris Eubank Jr.; however, negotiations fell through and Brook agreed to move up two weight divisions to challenge Golovkin. The fight aired in the United States on HBO and on Sky Box Office pay-per-view in the United Kingdom.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 5 September, the WBA withdrew its sanction for the fight. Although they granted Golovkin a special permit to take the fight, they stated that their title would not be at stake. The reason for the withdrawal was because Brook had never competed in the middleweight division. WBA president Gilberto Mendoza Jr. said, "What I most regret is that there are no boxers at 160 pounds who will fight against 'Triple G,' and Brook has to move up two divisions to fight against him." The Golovkin camp were said to be disappointed with the decision with promoter Tom Loeffler saying, "somehow the WBA thought it was too dangerous for a welterweight to move up to middleweight to fight the biggest puncher in boxing. I guess that is a compliment to GGG as they sanctioned [Adrien] Broner moving up two divisions [from lightweight to welterweight] to fight Paulie [Malignaggi in 2013] and Roy Jones moving up two divisions [from light heavyweight to heavyweight] to fight John Ruiz [in 2003] for WBA titles, and Kell Brook is undefeated and considered a top pound-for-pound boxer."


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Golovkin came out aggressively, going as far as to buckle Brook's legs in the first round. He was met with stiff resistance as Brook began to fire back, connecting multiple clean combinations on Golovkin, none of which were able to faze him. In the second round Brook had his greatest success of the fight, but in the process had his right eye socket broken. Over the next three rounds, Golovkin began to break Brook down. The Englishman showed courage, determination and a great chin as he absorbed the bulk of a Golovkin onslaught. Despite the fight being even on two judges' scorecards, and one judge having Brook ahead by a point, the latter's corner threw in the towel to protect their fighter's damaged right eye, ending the fight in round 5 with both boxers still standing. Speaking after the fight, Golovkin said, "I promised to bring 'Big Drama Show,' like street fight. I don't feel his power. I feel his distance. He has great distance. He feels [my power], and after second round I understand that it's not boxing. I need street fight. Just broke him. That's it." Brook said, "I'm devastated. I expected him to be a bigger puncher. I think in the second round, he broke my eye socket. He caught me with a shot, and I was starting to settle into the fight, but I was seeing three or four of him, so it was hard to get through it. I was tricking him. His shots were coming underneath, and I was frustrating him. I was starting to settle into him, but when you see three or four of them, it is hard to carry on." Golovkin stated although Brook fought like a true champion, he was not a middleweight.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: According to Compubox stats, Golovkin landed 133 of his 301 punches thrown (44.2%), whilst Brook landed 85 punches, having thrown 261 (32.6%). The fight was aired live on HBO in the afternoon and drew an average of 843,000 viewers and peaked at 907,000 viewers. This was considered by HBO to be a huge success for an afternoon showing. A replay was shown later in the evening as part of the world super flyweight title fight between Roman Gonzalez and Carlos Cuadras. The replay averaged 593,000 viewers. Golovkin earned a guaranteed $5 million purse. Brook was guaranteed slightly less, around £3 million, but earned an upside of PPV revenue.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Following the win over Brook, there were immediate talks of a WBA unification fight against 'Regular' champion Daniel Jacobs (32–1, 29 KOs), as part of WBA's plan to reduce the amount of world titles in each division from three to one. Team Golovkin spoke of fighting Billy Joe Saunders after the Jacobs fight which would be a middleweight unification fight for all the belts.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: The date discussed initially was 10 December, which Golovkin's team had on hold for Madison Square Garden. The date was originally set by HBO for Álvarez after he defeated Liam Smith, but Canelo confirmed he would not be fighting again until 2017 after fracturing his right thumb. There was ongoing negotiations between Tom Loeffler and Al Haymon about the split in purses, if the fight goes to purse bids, it would be a 75–25 split with Golovkin taking the majority due to him being the 'Super' champion. As the negotiations continued, Jacobs wanted a better split, around 60–40. The WBA granted an extension for the negotiation period on 7 October, as the two sides originally had until 10 October to come to an arrangement or else a purse bid would be due. There was also a request to change the purse bid split to 60–40, which the WBA declined. Golovkin started his training camp for the fight on 17 October.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Loeffler told the LA Times on 18 October, although the negotiations remain active, the fight will not take place on 10 December. A new date for early 2017 would need to be set, still looking at Madison Square Garden to host the fight. Golovkin prides himself on being an extremely active fighter, and this is the first year since 2012 that he has been in fewer than three fights. WBA president Gilberto Mendoza confirmed in an email to RingTV that a deal had to be made by 5pm on 7 December or a purse bid would be held on 19 December in Panama. Later that day, the WBA announced a purse bid would be scheduled with a minimum bid of $400,000, with Golovkin receiving 75% and Jacobs 25%. Although purse bids were announced, Loeffler stated he would carry on negotiations, hopeful that a deal would be reached before the purse bid.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 17 December, terms were finally agreed and it was officially announced that the fight would take place at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 18 March 2017, exclusively on HBO PPV. Golovkin tweeted the announcement whilst Jacobs uploaded a quick video on social media. At the time of the fight, both fighters had a combined 35 consecutive knockouts. It was reported that Golovkin's IBO world title would not be at stake. The IBO website later confirmed the belt would be at stake. HBO officially announced the fight on 22 December, being billed as ""Middleweight Madness"". Loeffler confirmed there was no rematch clause in place.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: At the official weigh-in, a day before the fight, Golovkin tipped the scales at 159.6 lb, while Jacobs weighed 159.8 lb. Jacobs declined to compete for the IBF title by skipping a fight-day weight check. Unlike other major sanctioning bodies, the IBF requires participants in title fights to submit to a weight check on the morning of the fight, as well as the official weigh-in the day before the fight; at the morning weight check, they can weigh no more than above the fight's weight limit. Jacobs weighed 182 lb on fight night, 12 more than Golovkin.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: In front of a sell out crowd of 19,939, the fight went the full 12 rounds. This was the first time that Golovkin fought 12 rounds in his professional career. Golovkin's ring control, constant forward pressure and effective jab lead to a 115–112, 115–112, and 114–113 unanimous decision victory, ending his 23 fight knockout streak which dated back to November 2008. ESPN had Golovkin winning 115–112. The opening three rounds were quiet with very little action. In the fourth round, Golovkin dropped Jacobs with a short right hand along the ropes for a flash knockdown. Jacobs recovered, but Golovkin controlled most of the middle rounds. Jacobs was effective in switching between orthodox and southpaw stance, but remained on the back foot. Both boxers were warned once in the fight by referee Charlie Fitch for rabbit punching. According to Compubox punch stats, Golovkin landed 231 of 615 punches (38%) which was more than Jacobs who landed 175 of 541 (32%). Following the fight, some doubted Golovkin did enough to win. Jacobs thought he had won the fight by two rounds and attributed the loss due to the potential big money fight that is Golovkin vs. Canelo. Jacobs also stated after being knocked down, he told Golovkin, "he'd have to kill me." In the post-fight interview, Golovkin said, "I’m a boxer, not a killer. I respect the game." Before revenue shares, it was reported that Golovkin would earn at least $2.5 million compared to Jacobs $1.75 million.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 24 March, Tom Loeffler revealed the fight generated 170,000 pay-per-view buys. A replay was shown on HBO later in the week and averaged 709,000 viewers. Lance Pugmire from "LA Times" reported the live gate was $3.7 million, a big increase from the Golovkin vs. Lemieux PPV which did $2 million. He also said that merchandise and sponsors were higher.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: After retaining his belts against Jacobs, Golovkin stated that he wanted to unify the middleweight division and hold all the belts available. The only major belt not belonging to him was the WBO title held by British boxer Billy Joe Saunders. After defeating Jacobs, Golovkin said, <nowiki>"My goal is all the belts in the middleweight division. Of course, Billy Joe is the last one. It is my dream." There was rumours of the fight taking place in Golovkin'</nowiki>s home country Kazakhstan in June during the EXPO 2017. The last time Golovkin fought in his home country was in 2010. On 20 March, Golovkin said that he would fight Saunders in his native Kazakhstan or the O2 Arena in London.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Saunders tweeted on social media that although he didn't watch Golovkin's fight with Jacobs, he was ready to fight him. Saunders claimed to have signed the contract on his end and gave Golovkin a deadline to sign his. On 29 March, promoter Frank Warren also stated that Golovkin would have ten days to sign for the fight. Saunders later claimed to have moved on from Golovkin, until Warren said the deal was still in place. Over the next week, Saunders continued to insult Golovkin through social media. On 7 April, Warren told iFL TV, that Golovkin had a hand injury, which was the reason why the fight hadn't been made. In the interview, he said, "At the moment, they’re saying that Golovkin’s injured. So we’re waiting to see where this is all going. But as far as I’m concerned, we agreed [to] terms." It was also noted that he would wait until 6 May, for any updates. On 11 April, it was reported that the fight would not take place and Golovkin would ultimately focus on a September 2017 fight against Canelo Álvarez.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: Immediately after the Chavez fight on May 6, Canelo Álvarez announced that he would next fight Golovkin on the weekend of 16 September 2017, at a location to be determined. Golovkin, who before the fight stated he would not attend, was joined by his trainer Abel Sanchez and promoter Tom Loeffler. Golovkin joined him in the ring during the announcement to help promote their upcoming bout. Speaking through a translator, Álvarez said, "Golovkin, you are next, my friend. The fight is done. I've never feared anyone, since I was 15 fighting as a professional. When I was born, fear was gone." When Golovkin arrived in the ring, he said, "I feel very excited. Right now is a different story. In September, it will be a different style -- a big drama show. I'm ready. Tonight, first congrats to Canelo and his team. Right now, I think everyone is excited for September. Canelo looked very good tonight, and 100 percent he is the biggest challenge of my career. Good luck to Canelo in September." In the post-fight press conference, both boxers came face to face and spoke about the upcoming fight.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 9 May, Eric Gomez, president of Golden Boy Promotions told the LA Times that Álvarez had an immediate rematch clause in place on his contract, whereas Golovkin, if he loses, won't be guaranteed a rematch. Oscar De La Hoya later also revealed in an interview with ESPN the fight would take place at the full middleweight limit of 160 pounds with no re-hydration clauses, meaning Golovkin and Álvarez would be able to gain unlimited amount of weight following the weigh in. On 5 June, the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas was announced as the venue of the fight, and would mark the first time Golovkin would fight in Nevada. The AT&T Stadium, Madison Square Garden and Dodger Stadium missed out on hosting the fight. Eric Gomez of Golden Boy Promotions said in a statement that Álvarez would fight for the IBF meaning he would participate in the second day weigh in, which the IBF require that each boxer weighs no more than 10 pounds over the 160 pound limit. Although he said there was no word on whether Álvarez would fight for the WBC title, Álvarez claimed that he would not be. On 7 July 2017, Golden Boy and K2 Promotions individually announced the tickets had sold out.


title: Gennady Golovkin

text: On 15 August, Golden Boy matchmaker Robert Diaz revealed that Álvarez would indeed attend the IBF mandatory second day weigh in and fully intended to fight for the IBF title along with the WBA title. He did make it clear that whilst Golovkin would still defend the WBC and IBO title, Álvarez would not pay their sanctioning fees. On 22 August, IBF president Daryl Peoples announced that they would be dropping the mandatory second day weigh in for unification fights, meaning neither fighters are required to participate, however they would still encourage them to do so. It was reported that Álvarez would earn a base minimum $5 million and Golovkin would earn $3 million, before any shares of the revenue are added to their purses.