Gennady Golovkin

He is married to Alina and is blessed with a son Vadim who is currently attending primary school.

He shifted to Stuttgart, Germany, from his homeland in 2006 and later relocated to Santa Monica, California, US in 2014 where he presently resides with his family.

Apart from Kazakh, he can speak in three more languages namely Russian, English and German.

Gennady Golovkin was born on April 8, 1982, in Karagandy in the Kazakh SSR, Soviet Union, (at present Karagandy, Kazakhstan). His father, a Russian, was a coal miner and his mother, a Korean, worked as a lab assistant.

He shared great bond with his older brothers, Vadim and Sergey, and his twin brother, Maxim. He was inspired by his older brothers to foray into boxing when he was eight years old.

Since his kindergarten days, his brothers would arrange fights for him and his opponents, much older than him. According to him, it would be "Every day, different guys".

Vadim and Sergey were enlisted in the Soviet Army when Golovkin was nine years of age. The government intimated his family about Vadim’s demise in 1990 and about Sergey’s demise in 1994.

Victor Dmitriev became his first boxing coach when he joined a boxing gym for the first time in Maikuduk, Karaganda.

From November 2002, he held a scholarship with the Olympic Solidarity program.

He bagged gold medal at 2003 ‘World Amateur Boxing Championships’ held at Bangkok, defeating Oleg Mahskin.

He went on to win gold medal beating Christopher Camat at the 2004 ‘Asian Amateur Boxing Championships’ in Puerto Princesa, Philippines, thus qualifying for the 2004 Summer Olympics held at Athens, Greece. There, he represented Kazakhstan and won a silver medal.

Demonstrating excellent performance in his amateur career that he ended in 2005 with a record of 345-5, he moved on to embark on a professional career with Universum Box-Promotion making his debut in May 2006.

On July 11, 2009, he won the vacant WBO Inter-Continental middleweight title beating Brazil’s John Anderson Carvalho in Nürburgring, Nürburg, Germany.