Gennadiy Golovkin started earning life-changing money ever since he made his United States debut on HBO in 2012 against Grzegorz Proksa. 

Over the last 10 years, Golovkin has headlined shows from coast to coast in New York at the Madison Square Garden to Los Angeles at The Forum, with big-time fights in London, Monte Carlo, and Japan sandwiched in between.

Golovkin has specifically padded his pockets with a pair of lucrative pay-per-view fights against Canelo Alvarez.

A trilogy is forthcoming, as the archrivals will meet on Sept. 17 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on DAZN PPV. 

Golovkin (42-1-1, 37 KOs) is a unified middleweight champion who will be fighting for the first time at 168 pounds for Alvarez’s undisputed division title. 

At 40 years old and heading into his 45th professional bout, the Kazakh KO artist is inching close to calling it quits on his Canostota-bound, Hall of Fame career.

“I will retire at some point, and it’s not far,” Golovkin told SecondsOut with a grin. “[Alvarez is] going to help me retire from the financial standpoint, first of all, but we’ll see.”

Triple G has been paid handsomely for his fights over the last decade. In March 2019, he signed a six-fight, three-year deal with DAZN that was guaranteed to pay him at least eight figures per fight and up to $100 million overall. 

The third Alvarez fight will equate to big business for the 2004 Olympics silver medalist who sports an 84% career knockout ratio.

During the promotion of the third matchup, the WBC, WBO, WBA, IBF, and Ring Magazine super middleweight champion Alvarez (57-2-2, 39 KOs) has continuously ribbed Golovkin saying GGG has been sticking around waiting to fight him for one last payday. 

“It’s not that I changed my style. I expanded my arsenal and I became more versatile,” said Golovkin. “I realize this fight against Canelo is going to be a tough fight, and we are going to get ready for this with my coach. I’ll definitely show my best. My Mexican style is with me, it’s not going anywhere, and I’ll be using that as well. I hope that we will succeed.” 

Golovkin maintained that he’s been unbothered by Alvarez’s jibes, which have included calling Golovkin an a**hole, and that he uses the mantra and slogan of “Mexican style” as a marketing stunt to win the adulation of Latino fans.

“Again, I’ll show my best and I hope we will succeed. To be honest, I didn’t react immediately because I didn’t pay too much attention to what he was saying at the moment,” said Golovkin. “I would say that I’m disappointed at this approach because I believe it’s low and mean to behave in that way. It does not do good to the world of boxing in general.” 

Manouk Akopyan is a sports journalist, writer and broadcast reporter. He’s also a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America and MMA Journalists Association. He can be reached on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and YouTube at @ManoukAkopyan, via email at manouk[dot]akopyan[at]gmail.com or on www.ManoukAkopyan.com.