Gennady Golovkin is an athlete.
Gennady Golovkin . As of May 2017 , he is ranked as the world 's best middleweight by BoxRec and the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board , and second best by The Ring . He is also ranked as the world 's third best boxer , pound for pound , by The Ring , fifth by BoxRec , and seventh by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board . Golovkin won his first major world championship , the WBA interim middleweight title , by defeating Milton Núñez in 2010 . After Canelo Álvarez vacated his WBC middleweight title in 2016 , Golovkin was elevated to full champion and now holds world titles by three of the four major boxing sanctioning bodies . In his amateur career , Golovkin won a gold medal in the middleweight division at the 2003 World Championships .