Sunday Punch: Gennadiy Golovkin does horrible things to Matthew Macklin’s liver

Body shots hurt.

You know I love body shots and I love Gennadiy Golovkin, so how about some vintage GGG for the first Sunday Punch of August?

Golovkin made his third United State appearance on June 29th, 2013 against Matthew Macklin at Foxwoods in Connecticut. This was a WBA middleweight title defense for the Kazakh power-puncher against someone who had recently taken losses against Felix Sturm by split decision and KO to Sergio Martinez. A first-round KO of Joachim Alcine set Macklin up for uh... not good times.

This wasn’t a competitive fight but Macklin hung tough through two rounds. Then the third frame started and Golovkin uncorked a left hook to the liver that had Macklin collapsing in dramatic fashion. Done and dusted.

You can watch the video of the full fight at the top of the page, or skip to Round 3 at about the 14:50 mark to watch Golovkin dent Macklin’s insides.

Golovkin (41-1-1, 36 KOs) is scheduled to fight secondary WBA middleweight champion Ryota Murata in Japan on a big New Year’s Eve card. That should be a great bout from an action standpoint but it seems clear that GGG’s days of being in big blockbuster matchups in the US are waning if not totally gone. Macklin (35-6, 22 KOs) retired in 2016 on a four-fight winning streak, albeit one where he struggled with (on paper) clearly inferior opposition in his last two fights. He can be heard on Sky Sports boxing broadcasts as a color commentator.