Gennady Golovkin's Crushing Overhand Knockout Punch, In Slow Motion

We gave you one shot of GGG's second-round knockout last night, but HBO threw up the realtime and reverse-angle slow motion shots. It's worth a re-watch, if only to gawk at how ordinary Golovkin can look throwing an overhand left that would drop an APC.

That's how Golovkin operates. Here's Hamilton Nolan last year:

Golovkin has knocked out 89 percent of his pro opponents, the highest rate in the sport. He's not a flashy fighter. He doesn't throw blinding 10 punch combos or wound-up bolo punches or huge swinging hooks that look like he's trying to punch down a house. It's not how his punches look so much as it is what happens to people who get hit by his punches: they fall down. Often they look shocked, even offended, when they feel his first punch, as if their promoter sneakily signed them up to fight a grizzly bear. Aggressive fighters often turn meek immediately after being touched by the most routine Golovkin jab. Soon afterwards—a round, or two, or five—they fall down unconscious. Golovkin punches like Cartoon Man. Opponents go flying backwards or fall straight down like the fake fights in movies, the one-hitter-quitters that never really happen too much in real life, outside of Golovkin fights.

Golovkin is 32 now, and wherever that supernatural strength comes from, he appears to have plenty enough left to be casual about it. This is good, because we haven't seen nearly enough of the Kazakh in the marquee, and specifically we still haven't seen that great Golovkin fight we assume will happen once his opponents stop falling down quite so fast. It feels like we're just getting to know him. Below, you can read Hamilton's piece about an afternoon with with a generally agreeable alpha predator.