After a 10-day trial period of training at Victor Conte’s SNAC facility in beautiful San Carlos, California, Gennadiy Golovkin (40-1-1, 35 KOs) plans on training for his full camp there for his next title defense of his IBF middleweight belt against unbeaten mandatory Kamil Szeremeta (21-0, 5 KOs) on March 28.
For a number of years, Golovkin, 37, had been training at high altitude at Big Bear, California, and doing a lot of running in the hills. According to Mike Coppinger, GGG will now be focusing on doing sprints with Conte, which makes a lot of sense.
All the road work is more oriented to losing weight, and tends to tear down a lot of muscles in the process. Golovkin was arguably tearing himself down all these years with his mountain training, and not focusing on keeping his lean muscle tissue.
That’s the negative drawback with running long distance. It makes sense for overweight fighters to run, but not for someone like Golovkin, who keeps his weight under control in between fights. In his case, sprinting on a track is ideal. San Carlos has a really nice track. This writer used to sprint there in track meets and all comers events.
Some believe that mountain training might have tore Golovkin down, causing him to be weaker for his fights. Now that Golovkin is training back at sea level and no longer focusing on tearing himself down with long runs in the mountains, he may be stronger for it. That’s scary to imagine.
Golovkin is already powerful as it is, but with him having potentially additional power, it could be the equivalent of the Fountain of Youth.
Golovkin certainly needs that at this point in his career, seeing that he looked worn down in his last fight against Sergiy Derevyanchenko last October. GGG won a close 12 round decision, but a lot of boxing fans thought he lost.
Derevyanchenko was the stronger and more active fighter in the championship rounds. Moreover, Golovkin didn’t look great in his fight with Steve Rolls, and his two matches against Canelo Alvarez. He lost the second one in 2018, and the first fight was scored a 12 round draw in 2017.
Golovkin needs to shine against the little known 30-year-old Polish fighter Szeremeta on March 28 in order to stay in the hunt for a third match against Canelo in September of this year. GGG has a good chance of getting the Canelo fight, as long as he beats Szeremeta and looks good doing so. Golovkin can’t afford a loss or another controversial decision in his last fight against Derevyanchenko. That would be poison for GGG.
Some boxing fans point out that Mikey Garcia didn’t benefit from his training at the SNAC facility before his match against Errol Spence Jr. last year. That was a different situation. Mikey moved up two weight classes, and bulked up in order to compete with IBF welterweight champion Spence.
As a result, Mikey put on too much weight, and it didn’t transform him into a legitimate welterweight. Mikey lacked the frame to fight at welterweight at a high level. Adding all the bulk was the equivalent of tying a rocket to a skateboard. It didn’t improve him to any great extent.
