Gennady Golovkin and David Lemieux’s perfect storm sparks memories of a Mexican battle in California - Steve Bunce

There was once a perfect storm in boxing and it took place one night in 1977, when two tiny Mexicans clashed at the Inglewood Forum in a part of Los Angeles known as Little Mexico

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It has taken Gennady Golovkin more than five years, with 15 wins in 15 world title fights and just under 30 knockdowns, to become an overnight success in a boxing world that has never really warmed to Eastern bloc bruisers.

This Saturday at the citadel of slugging, Madison Square Garden in New York, Golovkin, a proud son of Kazakhstan, finally gets his pay-per-view slot on American television in a fight with Canada’s David Lemieux that is all about expectation. The pair will enter the ring with three world middleweight title belts between them but nobody bought a ticket because of the belts boxing’s ridiculous governing bodies hand out.

They will pack the old arena, which is smelly and soiled from too many years on the entertainment front line, because Lemieux is also a heavy puncher, having knocked out or stopped 31 of the 34 men he has beaten. He has finished 27 of his 31 quick fights inside three rounds, which is slightly better than Golovkin’s record of 17 fights ending in three rounds or less. However, Golovkin is unbeaten in 33 fights, with 30 ending early, and has not heard the final bell since 2008. Nobody with a ticket expects to hear the bell on Saturday. It is approaching as close to a perfect storm as a prize fight can be.

There was once a perfect storm in boxing and it took place one night in 1977, when two tiny Mexicans clashed at the Inglewood Forum in a part of Los Angeles known as Little Mexico. This was a blue-collar crowd who came for fights and got fights on a Friday and Saturday that left them all satisfied. The riot police, in helmets and full protective clothing, roamed the aisles whenever there were fights at the Forum.

The two men were world champions and both unbeaten. They had history in the gyms of Mexico City and could not agree on a unified world-title fight, which meant they had to fight a pound above the weight limit to protect their bantamweight world titles. They were 119lb of hate and terror.

Carlos Zarate was the WBC champion, unbeaten in 45 fights with 44 of his victims knocked out. Alphonso Zamora was the WBA champion, unbeaten in 29 and all 29 of his opponents had been knocked out. They were boxing’s finest legal assassins during a decade of glittering brilliance.

It took all the skills of a fight fixer called Smooth Fraser to get the warring factions to the table, to the venue and into the ring. It was made for 10 rounds, not the championship distance of 15 rounds and the pair were collecting a record for small men of $125,000. The riot boys, with the dark visors on their helmets firmly snapped down, were in place when the boxers entered the ring in front of 12,500 fanatics.


 Carlos Zarate was unbeaten in 45 fights

Richard Steele, the referee, looked jittery as he pulled them together before the opening bell. “It was a helluva night,” Steele told me. The fight started, there was no hurry, nothing landed until 53 seconds when a fat geezer wearing Y-fronts and a vest entered the ring and came between the two boxers. It was the greatest Mexican stand-off in the history of sport. Nobody moved for a few seconds, there was silence, then laughter and then extreme violence.

When the riot police, about a dozen of them, with their anger exposed and their sticks waving, invaded the ring they grabbed the smiling man in the baggy underpants and launched him over the top rope. It turns out he was not a super hero and certainly could not fly. The fight started again as the riot boys pummelled the man in the ringside seats.

“What could I do? I just had to say, ‘Box on’, and they did,” continued Steele. Zamora hits Zarate all over the ring in round one and round two. It is a mismatch, ugly and nasty – the crowd love it. In round three Zamora slows and, on the bell to end the round, Zarate connects and Zamora is down. What a fight it is and at ringside the riot police are prowling.

In round four, Zamora is finished and is dropped again. He somehow gets up, staggers back pursued by a grinning Zarate and then six punches later Zamora is down and out. It is over and then the fighting in the ring starts again. Zamora’s dad is throwing punches at Zarate’s manager, then both corners are trading punches as the doctors try to help Zamora and the riot police get back under the neon eager for more ejections. It is mayhem, perfect for a baying crowd. “Never known anything like it before or since,” Steele tells me.

This Saturday, I expect something similar but without the riot police and the comical fat Mexican with a vest tucked firmly into his grubby kecks.