Can we talk about boxing again?

Boxing? Kind of an afterthought at the moment. Let’s talk Cubs!

Besides, the general public still has bad vibes from the Fight of the Century-ish between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao from earlier this year.

That match was hyped like 19 Transformers movies mashed into one….it cost $99.95 to buy…everyone bought it…it turned out to be super boring…12 rounds of hospital soup…you wound up having to apologize to everyone who came over to your house that night.

You feel about that fight the way you feel about that hat you bought on vacation and wore just once. Why did I buy that ridiculous hat? I’m never buying a hat on vacation again.

Boxing hears your complaint. Sort of. There are plenty of times that boxing can be earth’s most maddening sport—imagine a herd of cats trying to organize a herd of cats—but there’s a general recognition that boxing needs a new star, a next wave, some fresh energy to offset ambivalence and inertia of superstars in sunset.

So here’s Gennady Golovkin. Fighting Saturday night at a sold-out Madison Square Garden in a fight to be shown on HBO pay-per-view. Ready to be next. Ready to be that star.

OK, I’m not seeing an immediate flicker of recognition. You might not know Golovkin, the undefeated middleweight from Kazakhstan.

You might not even know how to pronounce “Gennady Golovkin.” You may never have watched Golovkin fight, and you might not know he’s 33-0 as a pro with 30 knockouts, including an astonishing 20 in a row. You may not be able to pick him out of a crowd, though you’ve probably seen him, weirdly enough: that’s Golovkin shadowboxing in an Apple Watch commercial that debuted last week during Monday Night Football.

Boxing fans, they know Gennady Golovkin (left).

For years there’s been a lot of fight world love for the man they call GGG or “Triple G.” It seems whenever I talk to fans or people in the business, they wind up gushing about Golovkin and his aggressive style, which is the antithesis of the listless ring-dancing that happened during May-Pac.

“I love him,” the pro Heather Hardy told me last spring. “Favorite fighter. I love how he punches, man. That guy just has the sweetest punches.”

The Journal’s boxing writer Gordon Marino said he pretty much admires “everything” about Triple G: “His composure, his balance, the way he comes in behind the jab…his short left hook to the body is one of the best I have ever seen.”

I guess you could say right now that Golovkin is a fighter’s fighter, though that might be selling his potential a bit short. Calling someone a “someone’s someone” (writer’s writer, actor’s actor, drummer’s drummer) is usually polite code for “very talented…but never actually made it big.”

Whereas Golovkin wants to make it big. He sees that opening right now at the top of the sport—and wants to take it.

“I bring a new story,” he said Wednesday afternoon in a small upstairs room at the Garden, surrounded by advisers including his trainer Abel Sanchez. He smiled, as if eager to please. Despite his fearsome ring reputation, Golovkin, who lives in Los Angeles and trains in Big Bear Lake, Calif., and whose English has improved considerably in recent years, comes across as easygoing, almost boyish.

Golovkin’s camp sees a template in Pacquiao, another boxer with a long global reach whose popularity swelled when mainstream sports fans got to see his playful, relatable side.

“There are a lot of parallels between Gennady and Pacquiao,” said Golovkin’s promoter, Tom Loeffler.

Golovkin’s time to strike is now. He is 33.

On Saturday he will meet Canadian David Lemieux, and if all goes to plan, a potential showdown with an established headliner like Miguel Cotto or Canelo Alvarez looms. Golovkin also didn’t rule out the possibility of a tangle with Mayweather, who retired again in September. (“He’s not finished—he’s a good businessman.”)

“These are very important moments,” Golovkin said.

Yes, boxing is quick to declare a moment, and it hasn’t always delivered, as many of us realized again last May. And yet there are people inside the sport who think Saturday could be the start of a very big thing. It isn’t the Cubs knocking on the door of a World Series. But it’s a start.

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