Gennady Golovkin, a 33-year-old middleweight from Kazakhstan, scored an eighth-round technical knockout over David Lemieux of Canada on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden in a title unification bout.
A raucous announced crowd of 20,548 appeared ready to anoint Golovkin as boxing’s next big star, chanting his name at regular intervals, and then exploding after the referee Steve Willis stopped the bout at 1 minute 32 seconds of the eighth.
“I was strong tonight,” Golovkin said. “My punches hurt him.”
Golovkin knocked Lemieux down with a left hook to the ribs in the closing seconds of the fifth round.