By Rocky Morales at ringside
Photos: Sumio Yamada

Undefeated middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0-1, 34 KOs) successfully defended his WBA and WBC titles with a devastating second round KO over WBC #1 super welterweight and all too willing challenger Vanes “The Nightmare” Martirosyan (36-4-1, 21 KOs) on Saturday night at the StubHub Center in Carson, California.

Martirosyan looked good in the first round and even landed a couple solid combinations on Golovkin. Golovkin, however, turned it up a couple notches in the second round and seemed to declare war on Martirosyan. The end came in the middle of the round when GGG landed a solid right uppercut to the chin of Martirosyan, then followed up with a barrage of savage punches and punctuated it with one final shot as Martirosyan was headed face down and splayed out on the canvas. Time was 1:53.

Referee Jack Reiss reached a count of 10 but could have counted to 100 before Martirosyan would have been able to rise. With the victory, GGG serves notice to Alvarez, Charlo, Saunders, Derevyanchenko, Jacobs, Murata and Andrade that he is far from ready to hand over his middleweight belts to a successor.